Slowly We Rot (34 page)
The house at the end of Sierra
Avenue was an old California bungalow. It was a small, modest-looking home
with a gabled roof. Unlike most of the other houses in the sprawling
residential area, the front yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence. There
were palm trees in the yard. He spotted solar panels on the roof. An electric
light was on in at least one of the interior rooms.
Noah was shocked.
Someone was living in the
house. He’d spent a lot of time preparing himself for a forlorn, abandoned
wreck of a place, a description that applied to so many of the houses he’d encountered
since leaving the mountain. Out of all the millions of empty, decaying homes
scattered across this dead nation, there had been no good reason to think the one
he sought would be an exception to the rule.
Yet it was impossible
to deny what he was seeing. The place looked well-kept, with a tidy lawn. The
fence surrounding it was fortified with barbwire. Metal spikes jutted between
the coils of wire at regular intervals. He suspected whoever lived here had
personally installed and modified the fence to keep out dead things. A chain
with a padlock was wrapped around the gate latch, but the padlock was hanging
open. There would have been no need to click it shut, what with zombies lacking
the dexterity to remove the chain and open the gate.
His breath came in
short, nervous gasps as he approached the gate. He told himself not to get too
excited. Someone living here didn’t mean the miracle he’d been hoping for had
occurred. A lot of years had passed since the last time Lisa had verifiably resided
here. Someone else entirely might have commandeered this house for their own
use once the worst of the apocalyptic upheavals had subsided. But these self-admonitions
did little to calm him.
He had a hand on the padlock
when the front door opened and a middle-aged woman with long, gray hair stepped
out on the porch with a shotgun. She racked a shell into the chamber and aimed
the shotgun at Noah, whose .357 remained in its holster. He had no wish to
draw it, knowing he’d never be able to get it out in time to protect himself
anyway.
“You best move along
now,” the woman called out in the hoarse rasp of a longtime smoker. “There’s
nothing for you here.”
Noah guessed she was
somewhere near fifty. Deep lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth
suggested a life of struggle and strain. But what really compelled his
attention was the woman’s unmistakable resemblance to Lisa. It was visible in
the bright blue of her eyes and the shape of her face. She looked the way Noah
imagined Lisa might look after decades of hard labor in an outdoor environment.
Keeping the shotgun
aimed at him, the woman came down from the porch and advanced about halfway
down the center strip of sidewalk that led to the gate. “Are you deaf? I told
you to move along. If you’re not gone in the next five seconds, I
will
shoot you where you stand.”
Noah let out a breath.
“Are you Cynthia Thomas?”
The woman lowered the
shotgun a little, frowning at him. “How do you know my name?”
Well, at least that
mystery had been solved. Lisa’s parents hadn’t died in a tragic accident,
after all. Not that Noah had ever truly believed otherwise. He reached into
his pocket and took out the scrap of envelope. “I tore this off an envelope
from a package you sent to your daughter when she was in college.”
The woman lowered the
shotgun and approached the gate. She reached over it and snatched the scrap of
paper from Noah’s hand, examining it for a long moment before lifting her eyes
to study his face.
“I’ll be damned. It’s
you. That goddamned boy.”
Noah flinched,
surprised by the venom in her voice. “I’m Noah, if that’s what you mean.”
Cynthia Thomas shook
her head. “Christ. What are you doing here after all this time? Don’t you
live on the other side of the goddamned country?”
“I did, yes.” Noah
clenched his hands tight to still tremors of anxiety. This woman seemed
volatile. He needed to come across as calm and unthreatening. “And I stayed
out there for years after the end of the world, living on a mountain all
alone. But I got tired of being alone and decided to see if I could find
Lisa.”
Cynthia snorted, a
corner of her mouth rising in open disdain. “Long way to come based on nothing
but a whim and a wish, with no guarantee of finding what you were looking for
at the end of it. Fucking foolish, if you ask me.”
Noah ignored this and
forced himself to ask the only question that really mattered. “Is she still
alive?”
Cynthia grunted.
“Yeah, she’s alive. Open the gate and come on in. I’ll take you to her.”
After unwinding the
chain from around the latch, Noah carefully opened the gate and, mindful of the
coils of barbed wire, eased his way through it, pushing it shut behind him.
Lisa’s mother turned her back on him as she led him back up the sidewalk. He
was glad she did, because he didn’t want her to see the moisture shining in his
eyes or the giddy smile that kept trying to pull at the edges of his mouth. In
his wildest hopes, he’d never truly believed this would be the outcome of his long
journey. A happy resolution flew in the face of everything he knew about the
way the post-apocalypse world worked. There was no more compelling proof of
this than the fact that everyone else in his family was dead.
Including Aubrey.
That truth nearly
staggered him as it came back now, no longer hidden behind the impenetrable
mental wall he’d erected. He knew it because he’d been there when she died.
But he pushed the terrible memories away, unwilling to confront them even now.
The wall slid back into place, never to be pushed back again. He’d come
through all that darkness to a place of light. For once, fate was taking a
brighter turn.
They climbed the porch
steps and entered the house, the interior of which reminded him of the
convenience store he’d broken into earlier in the day. It was a perfectly
preserved piece of the past. Everything looked immaculate, the floor and
surfaces clean and sparkling. The furniture looked almost new. There were
many framed family photographs hanging from walls and propped up on end tables
and other surfaces. He saw Lisa’s smiling face in many of them, often posed
with a much younger-looking Cynthia Thomas and a man Noah assumed was Lisa’s
father.
Cynthia caught him
studying the photos and guessed what he was thinking. “That’s Lisa’s daddy in
the pictures. He’s been gone a long time.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “We’re
all sorry about something, aren’t we? Look, I’ll be blunt. Since you came all
this way just to see my baby girl, I guess you can be trusted. You’re welcome
to stay as long as you want. I wouldn’t mind having a man around the house
again and it’d be a relief to have someone helping me with Lisa.”
Noah’s brow creased. “
Help
you with her? What do you mean?”
Cynthia headed for a
hallway on the other side of the living room. “Come see for yourself.”
The joy he’d felt
moments ago slipped away, replaced by a dread that deepened with each step he
took down the hallway. Cynthia opened a door at the end of it and Noah
followed her into a bedroom. His face crumpled and his knees almost gave out
when he saw the shape lying beneath the blankets on a twin bed wedged into a
corner of the small room.
He could tell from the
contours of the woman’s face that she was Lisa, but she was not the Lisa he
remembered. She was heavy and her bloated features were dotted with pimples.
Her formerly gorgeous flowing blonde locks were gone, her hair now cut in a
short, choppy way. She was awake and her head turned in their direction as
they approached the bed. Her gaze went first to her mother, but then drifted
over to Noah and settled there for a long, uncomprehending moment. Then a
tired smile touched the corners of her mouth, which opened as she tried to say
something. Words came out, but he did not understand them. She gave a little
laugh and repeated them.
Her meaning belatedly
registered.
Noah? Is it really
you?
Cynthia Thomas smiled
and went to the bed. She sat on its edge and brushed her daughter’s lank hair
from her forehead. “It’s really Noah, baby. He came a long way just for you.
Isn’t that nice?”
Lisa’s eyes were shiny
with tears as she struggled to form more words.
I love you, Noah.
Noah felt like the
world was about to fall out from under him. He had been wrong about the
universe finally granting him a moment of grace. Over the course of his
journey, he’d tried to prepare himself for all eventualities, envisioning an
array of dreadful scenarios. He believed that by doing this he would be ready
for anything, that nothing could surprise him. But of all the many terrible
things he’d imagined, none had been as bad as this.
Noah didn’t consider
himself anything like a shallow person. Lisa’s former beauty was something
he’d appreciated, but there were many pretty girls in the world. It was
something about the inner Lisa that had transformed attraction into obsession.
He would have been okay with her looks not being what they once were. Hell, he
wasn’t much to look at these days. But this went well beyond any aesthetic
concerns. Lisa had been damaged in some devastating way.
Noah let out a shuddery
breath and said the only acceptable thing. “I love you, too, Lisa.”
Cynthia stood and
addressed her daughter again. “You get some rest, baby. Noah and I have some
things to talk about. You can catch up later.”
Lisa muttered something
in reply and her eyes fluttered shut.
Cynthia glanced at
Noah. “We’ll talk in the kitchen.” She stepped through the doorway. “Close
the door behind you.”
Noah’s gaze lingered on
Lisa a moment longer. He wiped tears from his eyes. He wanted to scream but
stifled the urge, forcing himself to hold back his anguish and grief a while
longer. He needed to hear what Lisa’s mother had to say before he could let
that happen.
In the kitchen, Cynthia
took a bottle of whiskey and two glasses down from a cupboard and set them on a
table. She pulled out a chair and sat down, gesturing for Noah to do the same.
He sat across from her
and said, “What happened to her?”
Cynthia splashed
whiskey into both glasses and pushed one across the table. “An accident a few
months before the plague outbreak. Driver’s side airbag failed and she went
through the windshield. She should have died, really, but God wasn’t merciful
that day. She suffered severe brain damage.”
Noah grimaced and shook
his head. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“It’s your fault, you
know.”
Noah frowned. “Come
again?”
Cynthia nodded, gulping
from her whiskey glass. “She never got her head straight after she came home.
Girl was sullen and bitter. When she wasn’t screaming at me, she was
threatening to run away to Tennessee and be with you again. Or sometimes it was
the opposite. She would stare into space or just zone out. We figured that’s
what happened when she had the accident. No way to ever know for sure, I
guess. Except for it being your fault. That we do know. She wasn’t like that
before you.”
Noah thought,
Maybe
you didn’t know your daughter as well as you believed
.
He didn’t say anything.
Cynthia drank more
whiskey. “So it’s like I said. You ruined everything. It’s your fault she’s
like she is now. And that’s why you’re gonna stay and help me take care of
her. You
owe
it to me. It’s the very least you can do.”
Noah stared at her in
silence for a long time before saying, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Cynthia grunted. “I’m
glad you have at least some shred of common decency. My God, I deserve a break
after all these years of tending to her. I love her, but I’ve come to hate
her, too. She’s a full-time goddamn job. Cleaning up after her, feeding her.
It’s like having to take care of a two-hundred pound baby forever. Does that
sound like fun to you?”
Noah eyed the glass of
whiskey in front of him. For a brief instant, he considered tossing the booze
down his throat and filling the glass again. Instead, he pushed it back across
the table and said, “I don’t drink anymore.”
Cynthia rolled her
eyes. “Right. I’m guessing you’ll be hitting the bottle pretty hard after a
few days of wiping pimply, diarrhea-smeared ass.”
“Can she hear us from
in here?”