Last, I went down the dog food aisle. I scooped all the cans of dog food that would fit into the backpack. I hesitated, then went back for a second backpack and filled that with dry food. I knew as well as anyone else that when food went short, the animals would suffer most. Not if I could help it.
On the way out, I emptied my pockets of all the bills I had and placed them next to the cash register. I had no idea how much the medicines cost, but knew that it wouldn’t anywhere near cover the damage I’d done to the store.
I glanced longingly back at the pharmacy counter and the pet food display, briefly thought of loading up with everything I could carry. But I knew, deep down, that I should not take more than I could pay for.
Still feeling guilty, I stepped through the shattered door to my bike. I nestled one backpack in the basket and slung the other on my back. I began to push away from the curb, when something caught my eye.
Something red and white and delicious.
The glow of a Coca-Cola machine beckoned behind the door of the Suds ’n’ Duds, the bar and Laundromat next door. I’d always thought drinking and laundry were a strange combination, but I had noticed that many people Outside required constant stimulation. Odd.
I looked away from the Coke machine, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.
But I couldn’t help glancing back at the seductive glow. Like a moth to the flame, I drifted toward it. In the bottom of my pocket, I fingered some loose coins. They clanked together, slipping against my sweaty palms.
The doors opened at my touch, and I stepped inside. Unlike the drugstore, the Laundromat advertised that it was open twenty-four hours. The washing machines and dryers lining the walls and aisles had long since fallen silent, and the fluorescent lighting buzzed and flickered overhead. I had never used machines like that. We used simple tubs, washboards, and lye soap. I couldn’t imagine not having anything to do while laundry did itself. The cracked tile on the floor looked grimy, and I smelled a combination of stale beer and perfumed laundry soap. I stepped around abandoned plastic baskets full of clothes on the floor to stand before the warm red glow of the Coke machine.
I fed the machine a dollar in quarters and nickels, then punched the glowing button to release the soda. The machine clunked inside, and I reached down to retrieve my treat from the receptacle.
But nothing came out.
Gritting my teeth, I reached up into the mouth of the machine, trying to feel if it had gotten stuck. My fingers wiggled in air and darkness.
I stood back and pressed the button again. Nothing happened. The machine had eaten my money.
I dug into my pocket. I only had two dimes left.
My hands balled into fists. This might be the last chance I ever got to taste a Coke. Whether it was because of what had happened Outside, or my parents’ rescinding of Rumspringa, I wanted the syrupy taste of this small rebellion. And this stupid machine was denying that bit of freedom to me . . . just like everyone else.
I slammed my hand against the face of the machine. It was the first time I’d ever struck anything or anyone out of anger. The blow echoed against the plastic, startling me with the force of it traveling up my arm to my shoulder. But the machine was unmoved. It continued to hum as if nothing had happened, smugly digesting my change in the face of my pathetic assault.
Shoulders slumped in defeat, I turned to walk away. The drugstore had caved under the force of my criminal will, but the Coke machine was virtuous. Inviolate.
I paused, glancing over the rows of battered washing machines to the bar. It wasn’t much, just a long counter with chipped, mirrored shelves of bottles behind it and wobbly stools before it. But it was apparently enough to keep the folks entertained while they were doing their laundry. A television perched above the bar was tuned to the soft snow of static. They must have served some food here too, since flies swarmed over a paper tray of french fries abandoned on the counter.
My eyes narrowed. There might be Coca-Cola there.
And, after all, I had paid for it.
I circled behind the bar, scanning the bottles and cans. The spirits were colorless, brown, amber, and red. I didn’t know why one would drink something called “extra dry.” Nor did I understand why someone would drink something violent, as suggested by the “brut” on the label. And “Irish Rose” sounded entirely unappetizing. Flowers, in my experience, tended to taste bitter. My gaze roved over cans stuffed into a small refrigerator under the bar. Just beer and wilted lemons.
I frowned. I’d tasted beer once before and hated it.
I really wanted a Coke. Just a Coke.
At the end of the mirror behind the bar stood a shiny steel metal door. I grasped the latch. It was cold—I expected that it was a refrigerator of some type. A walk-in cooler that might contain what I was looking for.
Cold air blew into my face as I opened it, and my breath made ghosts in the fog. Something inside smelled funny, but I chalked it up to rotting food. I reached inside for a light switch, and a weak fluorescent light flickered on overhead. It illuminated metal racks on wheels full of beer, a couple of kegs on the floor . . .
. . . and a familiar stack of red and white cans, tucked behind one of the movable racks. I grinned in triumph.
A spider web brushed across my face, and I rubbed it away.
I should have paid attention to that, to that sensation that made me shudder. I pawed at my face and took two quick steps inside, trying not to imagine the spider that had created the string now caught in my hair.
I reached for the cans of Coke, victorious adrenaline surging through me. But that adrenaline soured, curdled as I became aware of something sticky on the floor that was sucking at my shoes.
I stared down.
A brown stain spread across the concrete floor to a drain. At first I assumed that some of the cans had frozen, exploded. But as I pushed the rack aside, I saw that it had trickled from a body on the floor.
Not just a body. I had seen dead bodies before, at funerals. Those bodies were neatly dressed in their Plain clothes, pale and sunken, usually old. Since we didn’t embalm our dead, we buried them quickly, with little ceremony. Plain dead were peaceful, solemn.
This was . . . not peaceful. A man in a T-shirt and jeans lay on the floor. His head had been torn off, missing. I saw only white vertebrae glistening in that mass of gore that had been his neck.
I jammed my fist in my mouth. I was too terrified to scream, too shocked to do anything but utter a squeak.
And then I heard the clang of the cooler door slam shut behind me.
I scuttled back, tripped on a bucket. I fell down, backwards, on the floor, in the stain. I scrambled to my feet, whimpering in terror. I shoved at the door, but it was locked.
I sobbed, slammed my fist against it. The sound echoed just like my blow on the Coke machine and was just as ineffective. I tried to control my breathing. There had to be an emergency release, some way to get out . . . my shaking fingers worked around the seam of the door, feeling for a lever or a switch.
Something made a scraping sound above me.
Swallowing hard, I looked up.
Behind the fluorescent light, I could make out shadows. I shaded my eyes from the weak light with my hand. I was able to distinguish shapes—shapes of people. They were suspended upside down from the ceiling, curled up in balls or dangling with limbs dragging in spider webs of silk that drizzled down in the darkness, holding the forms there in an ethereal embrace.
My breath disturbed a string of silk that trailed from the shadowed ceiling. It moved as intangibly as smoke. I was reminded of when I was a young girl and had disturbed a nest of corn spiders in the barn. The creatures had crawled everywhere, in my hair, my bonnet, down the neck of my dress . . .
Something up there moved, shifted. And glowing red eyes stared at me.
I saw the figure scuttle across the ceiling in a spider-like fashion, but it was human . . .
“Oh God!” I swore, jerking on the handle to the door. I rattled it, working my hands around the door, trying to find an emergency release I knew had to be there.
The creature on the ceiling approached as silently as those barn spiders, reached toward me.
My shaking hands found a cracked plastic button to the right of the door. I pulled at it, turned it, whimpering, finally slapped it hard . . .
And the door sprang open. I lurched through the doorway, running behind the bar.
I knew that thing was behind me. I ran past the line of washing machines, turned back to see it pawing along the ceiling. I didn’t watch where I was going, stumbled over a box of laundry soap. The powdered soap spewed all over the floor, and I slammed against the wall of dryers.
The glass door of one of the dryers sprang open from the impact, and I found myself face to face with the contents of the machine. At first, I assumed that they were merely clothes, but . . . that smell . . . it was the same as in the cooler.
I could see pale, broken limbs turned in on themselves, a claw of a hand tangled in a sleeve. It was a crumpled, stinking body.
I whirled, only to find the creature from the cooler walking down the wall of dryers, hands behind knees, then dropping upright, on his feet. He was pale and filthy, and he smelled like blood. But what was most unnatural was the way his eyes glowed, like a cat’s in the darkness. Behind him, I could see other shapes gathering on the ceiling.
I didn’t bother to ask him what he wanted. I knew.
He wanted to kill me. Like he and the others had killed the man in the cooler and the man in the washing machine. It didn’t matter why. There was no reasoning. This was the visceral fear of prey in the face of the predator, bitter like bile in my throat. But I was determined to run.
Chapter Nine
I sprinted for the door, breath burning in my throat. I felt the creature snatch the tails of my apron, drag me back from the door. I shrieked and flailed, my feet skidding on the sticky floor.
I heard stitches pop and give way, the sash of my apron shredding in the predator’s grip. I lunged for the door.
I heard a snarl behind me. I knew that I had no hope, that even if I reached to door, he had me. But I was determined to try, to reach that golden threshold of sunshine before I was mauled to death, before my head was torn from my shoulders like that poor man in the cooler or my broken body was stuffed in the dryer like canned meat.
I straight-armed through the door, landed on my elbows on the pavement as I felt a hand latch around my ankle. I tasted blood in my mouth where I’d bitten my lip, twisted and turned to stare my fate in the face.
And the creature hissed. Abruptly, he released my ankle, his hand smoking in the sunshine.
I scrambled to my feet and ran toward my bike. I could see the shadows seething in the Laundromat, the glowing eyes behind the dark glass, mirroring the light of the seductive Coke machine. Somehow, they were trapped, pinned there by the daylight, I realized.
I struggled onto my bike, pumping the pedals as hard as I could down the street into the shining afternoon.
I could not stop shaking on my ride home. I quaked so hard that it was difficult to keep the bike from trembling under the uneven weight of the dog food and supplies in my basket. I pedaled so hard that it felt like my lungs were going to burst, swerving on the dark ribbon of road away from even the shadows of trees. I was afraid of what may lay in that soft darkness.
I am being punished for my sins. That was my first thought. Clearly, the gates of hell had burst open. Those creatures in the Suds ’n’ Duds were not human. They radiated evil—evil like I had never known or could even have imagined before. When there had been news of a contagion, I had doubted the reality of a medical evil. What I had seen was clearly not the work of medicine. This reeked of spiritual evil, something beyond what could be fathomed by any technology belonging to man.
I licked blood from my lower lip. I knew. I knew what had happened to Seth and Joseph. And the rider on the white horse. They had fallen prey to these monsters. Tears blurred my vision. I longed to tell Elijah, but I didn’t know that I would ever be able to form the words. There would be no kind, gentle way of telling him that his brothers had been torn limb from limb.
I wrestled with whom to tell, what to say. Any tale I could tell began and ended with sins I’d committed and the discovery of the man in the barn. Given the ruthlessness with which the Elders had chosen to leave him Outside, I knew that telling would result in certain death for him.
And perhaps also for me. They might not kill me outright, but if the Elders still believed in a contagion, they would probably throw me outside the gate, to be fed to those monsters. I shuddered. My sense of self-preservation eclipsed my desire to protect my community. I would not sacrifice myself that way, I decided. It was not God’s will that I died. He had allowed me to escape, despite my sins. He had a plan for me and would not allow me to die, I reasoned. Not yet.
I pedaled back to the road where the gate stood. It seemed such a flimsy barrier against those shadow creatures. I heaved my bike over it, mindful not to damage the precious contents of the basket.
I paused here, at the border of our world and Outside. I stared down at my dress, sticky with splotches of the dead man’s blood. I knelt down to the ground, smeared some mud over the stains. I gathered some stalks of yellow mustard at the side of the road, tucked them over my basket to hide the contents and walked my bike home.