Behind Our Walls (3 page)

"There's no one," Adam said, the smirk nearly acting as the match, tossed into Sophie's pool of rage. "We would have seen someone by now."

"Unless they didn't want you to see them," Sophie pointed out.

"Christ.
Fine.
" Corrine snapped as she turned to glare at Sophie. "Come along. I don't care. Just keep quiet. I don't want to waste all this time talking about our feelings."

Sophie looked at Rowen and nodded. She wanted them to have this time to themselves. She had to jog to catch up as Corrine was clearly not interested in waiting. Her assumption had been that after a few minutes, Corrine would not be able to resist the urge to lay into her, and that would be the foot in the door that she needed to get all of this hostility out into the open. Her sister's stubborn streak proved true however and she marched on, barely paying attention to Sophie.

"Can you at least talk to me?" Sophie asked.

Corrine let out a harsh breath, but didn't slow. "Not much for listening, are you? I told you that I didn't want to talk."

"I just don't understand why you and Dad are shutting me out like this. What am I supposed to be doing?"

This time Corrine did spin around to face her. "There is nothing you can do. That was pretty much settled back in Dad's shitty van when Mom was killed."

"Corrine, that wasn't my fault, you don't really—"

"Think that you killed our mother? No, of course not. You didn't pull the trigger. But when things were starting to fall apart, it was
your
brilliant idea for us to leave town and head for the cabin upstate. You were
convinced
it would be safe up there and no one would bother us. Never mind the twelve hours of driving we would have had to do in order to get there. And that was assuming that the roads stayed open, instead of getting taken over by psychotic, trigger-happy soldiers."

"I had no way of knowing that things were going to happen so fast. I thought we had time!"

"Well, we obviously didn't, did we? Even now, you can't even admit that you were wrong."

"I'm not denying that I was wrong. I'm just saying that if you had picked a different option, the same thing could have ended up happening. Or it could have been you, or me or Daddy who got killed. We all could have ended up getting killed. There's no way to know."

Corrine nodded and grinned, but the smile seemed no more than skin deep. Sophie saw the real emotions her sister felt, wrapped up in the single tear that streaked down her cheek. "Yeah, we'll never know now, will we? Very convenient."

Sophie started to reply but Corrine spun and resumed her walk up the road. Sophie shook her head and trudged along behind. It was like their conversations were on a constant loop, always ending at the same, pissed off destination. All she wanted was to get back to a place of civility, where the two of them could get along without all the blaming and fighting. What terrified her was the thought that it might not be possible. Like so much of the world around them, that state of being for the two of them could be lost forever.

Corrine stopped, and Sophie drew to a halt herself, looking down and to her right in the direction that Corrine pointed. In the distance, she could see the glow of lights through the trees, what looked like maybe the windows of a small cabin. She watched as Corrine started to make her way down the slope.

"Wait," she said. Corrine didn't even bother to slow down as she stumbled down the hill. Sophie started to make her way down after her, bracing herself against the spindly trees to stay on her feet. "Wait!" she hissed after her sister. "We shouldn't go down there alone."

"I'm not alone. You're with me. Besides, how bad could it possibly be?" Corrine asked over her shoulder. "We're in the middle of nowhere, you don't think there's a bunch of rovers down there sitting around the dinner table, playing Canasta, do you?"

Sophie wanted to point out the idiocy. They needed to get back and bring the others along for support. But it was clear that her choice was either to go along, or turn back to go for help, leaving Corrine behind. Nothing was going to convince her sister to alter her course. Besides, what happened if it got too dark and she wasn't able to find this spot again? For better or worse, Corrine was forcing her to come along. She squinted down at her feet in the low light, trying to keep from tripping on a clump of thick grass or exposed tree roots.

Maybe it would all be fine.

-6-

Each window of the house exuded a warm, inviting light and Sophie couldn't help but wonder where they could be getting the electricity. Corrine glanced back, as if momentarily seeking approval before reaching out to tap on the door. After a few moments, Sophie heard a chair scraping across the floor, followed by footsteps. The door opened and a flood of warm air rushed over them, followed by jazz music from inside.

The man who greeted them looked to be in his late forties and Sophie's first thought upon seeing him was that he looked military. He was roughly their height, slightly taller with a slender frame. She saw a tattoo peeking out from under the sleeve of his shirt. Some inner voice immediately warned her that they needed to be on guard, but Corrine stepped forward to greet him.

"How are you folks doing tonight?" he asked, glancing back and forth between them. After a moment, his face reddened and he shook his head.

"Sorry. Stupid question. You all need some help?"

Corrine nodded. "We've been on our own for a while, just been looking for anything we could use."

"I can imagine. Well, the things you see around here need to stay, they belong to me. But you're welcome to come in and rest for a while. Any others besides you?" He peered past them, as if he expected more people to descend on the house from the woods.

"No, it's just us," Corrine said. Sophie felt mildly satisfied that at least her sister wasn't a complete idiot.

He nodded, again shifting his gaze between the two of them. Sophie couldn't shake the awkward feeling that they were being evaluated, sized up. "Well, if you two want to come in and have a bite to eat, you're welcome."

Sophie knew that it was the last thing they should do, the pinnacle of all the stupid ideas that had ever been given voice. They didn't know anything about this guy or who else might be inside, waiting for them. Still, they followed him into the house which, to her surprise looked immaculate. It reminded her of their grandparents house. She spotted a bowl of some kind of stew or thick soup on the table and the smell made Sophie's stomach immediately clench as a wave of desire crested through her.

"Take a seat. I'll make you up some bowls."

Before she had her bearings, she was seated at the table with a bowl of beef stew and a glass of water.

"Sorry I can't offer you anything more adult for your beverage," he said, sitting down. Sophie caught another whiff of the aroma and immediately felt dizzy. It was filled to the brim with the most amazing looking food she had seen in months. After a few minutes, there were second helpings for each of them and Sophie was starting to feel disoriented. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten so much at one time.

"I'm surprised the two of you made it so far out here without running into trouble," he said. "My name's Reggie, by the way. Retired Army."

"Sophie," she said through a mouthful of beef, nodding across the table as well. "This...Corrine."

He smiled and nodded. She swallowed, and washed the stew down with some water. "What's been going on around here? Have you heard much?"

Reggie shrugged. Vaguely, in the back of her mind she wondered at how he made even a gesture as innocuous as that seem sinister. "Just what they reported on the local news until I lost the signal. But I've heard a fair amount of the crazy, coming over the short wave there. Don't know how much of it is true but I suppose it don't take much to figure out that things are really going to shit."

"But you haven't seen any other people?" Corrine asked.

Again, with the shrug. "I hear gunfire every now and then, but no people."

"You just keep to yourself," Sophie said.

"Yeah, that about covers it," Reggie said. "Crazy ass world out there, and the two of you look like you pretty much had front row seats."

Sophie spooned another portion of stew into her mouth and used that as an excuse to ignore his implied question. At least Corrine was keeping her mouth shut. She looked like she was about to fall asleep in her chair. Maybe Sophie could use that as a reason for them to excuse themselves from the table. The thought of the others, huddled up next to the road made her feel stabs of guilt. Besides, something bothered her about Reggie. There was a glint to his eye, something lurking behind that thin smile. She couldn't help but think that his concern for them and their well being was just an act.

She wanted to steer the conversation towards him and his background, but when she tried to form the question, her tongue kept getting caught up on the insides of her mouth. She flexed her jaw to try and work out the unexpected kinks. As she shook her head to try and clear out the cobwebs, she looked up at the walls all around them, the pictures in varying sizes of frames.

Her hand with the spoon dropped to the table.

Every picture had the same elderly couple in them. There they were at the Eiffel Tower and in another, she could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Here was one at Disney World and another at Niagara Falls. The same couple in every picture.

Reggie wasn't in any of them.

This wasn't his house.

There was a heavy sound, and she dragged her head up to see that Corrine had slid out of her chair. Sophie looked towards their host and the entire room dipped as she did so. It didn't feel like she was falling as much as the chair had lifted up to tilt her out. As she hit the ground, she heard the sound of Reggie's chair moving and the floorboards groaning as he got to his feet. She had just enough time to wonder what he was planning on doing, and if they had missed their last chance of walking out of here alive.

-7-

"Oh, Jesus."

Sophie and her mother turned at the sound of the glass shattering on the floor. Her father stood in the living room, the expression on his face slackened with dismay and fear. She never would have thought it possible to see it on that face, the source of all her security and comfort for so many years. To see that visage, reduced to such hopelessness made her blood run cold, even before she ran into the room and turned to see the footage running on the special alert.

The mushroom cloud over Berlin rose slowly, expanding into the sky above. She had become intimately familiar with the image, but only in the context of black-and-white documentaries about World War Two and Hiroshima. Putting it here, in full color, froze her in place, unable to form a complete thought. The footage was played on a constant five second loop. Already, there were reports of the dead easily reaching the tens of thousands. She couldn't move from where she stood, the world spinning around them uncontrollably. Barely a week ago, the President had been taken down into the emergency bunker with no explanation to the media. It seemed a hell of a lot clearer now. No one was stepping forward to claim responsibility, and no one knew how it had happened.

"What..." Corrine started, but couldn't finish the question. Sophie wanted to get everyone out of town, somewhere safer until things started to blow over. Now it looked like "blowing over" didn't seem like much of a possibility. The feeling in the room seemed to be that they might have waited too long.

She couldn't remember a time in her life when she had felt this afraid.

The room began to spin and she heard a sound, quiet but persistent in the back of her head. She couldn't figure out what it could be as she looked around at the others. They stared at the television, various expressions of fear frozen on their faces, like being stuck within a still life image. The color began to melt out of the walls around them and she suddenly felt like she was falling, straight down into a boiling hot vortex.

When Sophie opened her eyes, she was lying on cold concrete. She heard the sound again, more clearly this time, now that she had woken from her dream. It was rhythmic, banging against the wall.

Rusted metal.

Back and forth.

Bedsprings.

Sophie began to buck on the floor, trying to pull hands around that she now realized were tied behind her. She heard something else, in addition to that of the bed, a sound like crying.

Corrine was crying.

Sophie rolled over onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. It was only at that moment that she realized she had been stripped down to her underwear. The surroundings started to coalesce in her head, as the memories began creeping back. The house in the middle of the woods. The man at the dinner table, offering them all the help and support they needed. Reggie had been the one in the house, the house that wasn't his.

She looked frantically around the room for anything she could use as a weapon, anything she could use to get free. It was only a matter of time before he came in here to do the same to her. She had to get free.

There was a sound from somewhere above her and she looked up to see Rowen creeping down the stairs. They made eye contact and he pressed a finger to his lips, silently urging her to keep from making any noise. She nodded and tried to focus on her breathing, tried to stay calm.