False Dawn (15 page)

“…And then there was the trouble on the Sacramento when all the insecticides got dumped in the river by accident, which made that big mess all the way down to San Francisco Bay. Killed the fish, killed the insects, and then the birds died, most of them. I guess you noticed that. Don’t see birds here but once in a while. I ain’t heard birds in years Don’t miss ‘em much, up here. I got other things to think about. But it was a dumb thing to do. That’s what I think. Nobody planned anything right…But there,” she interrupted herself at last. “You two are hungry, aren’t you? Serving food, that used to be one of my jobs back at Squaw Valley. I’ll get right on it.” She hustled to her feet, the garish clothes like beacons in the darkening room. “Fancy me forgetting my manners like this. I got food here and you folks are wanting a meal. I’m willing to share with you—I got more’n enough. Come on down and look for yourselves. I’ll fix some of it up for us. There’s plenty of cans still. I took boxes and boxes of canned food, not just my pretties. I figured back then that Safeway was closed for good, you know.”

“Thanks very much,” Evan said guardedly as he got to his feet. “We’d be happy and grateful to share a meal with you…” He left the name he did not know hang in the air.

The old woman let out a cackle. “Y’mean I ain’t told you my name yet? Lordy, Lordy, what you must think of me. I’m Margaret Cornelia Lewis. Ain’t that a mouthful? Who’re you?”

“My name is David Rossi,” Evan answered, using the name he had given Thea when they first met. “That’s Thea.”

“Mister and Missus. Rossi, heh? Sounds kind of Italian. You Italian?” she demanded, peering closely at Evan’s sandy hair and blue eyes.

“Part,” he said truthfully. He looked quickly at Thea, hoping she wouldn’t object to the lie of their marriage. “We’re sure grateful for your hospitality,” he went on rapidly, hoping to get onto safer ground.

“Well. Well, Mister and Missus Rossi. You’re my first guests in ages,” Margaret Cornelia said happily, and went bustling out the door and down the stairs, calling as she went. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll do something about supper.”

“Evan, let’s get out of here,” Thea whispered urgently. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it.” She looked toward the stairs where Margaret Cornelia had disappeared. “She’s crazy, Evan. Truly crazy. Doesn’t she seem that way to you?”

“Yes,” he replied. “But we’ve got shelter and a hot meal.”

“I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if there was food enough for ten people for a year. We’ve got to get out of here. Promise me we won’t stay. Promise. She’s terrible. We aren’t safe.”

“Let’s see how it goes,” he hedged. He was hungry and he knew that Thea’s bite was worse, for he had seen her go white about the eyes as they walked, though at the time she had denied the hurt. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll leave.”

“
Promise!
” she insisted as they heard Margaret Cornelia coming back up the stairs, her voice growing louder as she neared them.

“Mister Rossi. Missus Rossi. It’s me.”

Evan nodded to Thea. “All right. I promise,” he said as he turned to greet their hostess.

“For the occasion. What do you think of it?” said Margaret Cornelia from the door. She had changed from her skiing clothes into a long dress bright with sequins. It was several sizes too large for her and the cloth hung in shiny folds between her shrunken breasts, glittery sacking without shape or suggestion of what it had been designed to look like. Her shoes had very high heels and were of some shiny material colored an improbable red. “This being such a special night I thought I’d dress up.” She turned provocatively in front of Evan. “Well?” she asked coyly. “What do you think of me, Mister Rossi? Isn’t this chic?”

“It’s quite a dress,” Evan said in complete honesty. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Thea move back from Margaret Cornelia, looking blankly at her.

“I bet you never saw anything like this, Missus Rossi. This dress, why there hasn’t been a dress like this made around here for close on twenty years,” Margaret Cornelia said to her, interpreting Thea’s reaction as stunned admiration.

“Not ever. I never saw one like that.”

Margaret Cornelia smiled complacently. “It’s nice to dress for dinner, I always say. It’s one of those nice things people don’t do any more, like going out on the town.”

“There’re a lot of nice things people don’t do any more,” Thea said.

“Yep. That’s true enough.” With a flirtatious turn of her head, Margaret Cornelia waited for Evan’s hand. “Mister Rossi, you’ll be my escort down, won’t you? It’s always nice to go to dinner on a gentleman’s arm.”

As Thea followed the two to the stairs, she said suddenly, “Do you have an outhouse? Or a bathroom?”

Margaret Cornelia gave an impatient little titter. “Sure do. Down the hall and to the left. It works fine most of the time. Just don’t flush unless you have to. You know what ice does to the plumbing, and it’s harder all the time to get replacements. Be gentle.”

“I’ll be careful with the plumbing,” Thea said stonily, going where the ancient fingers had pointed while Margaret Cornelia swept on, her hand like a vice on Evan’s arm.

The bathroom was filthy, as Thea had thought it might be. Years of excrement clung to the toilet bowl and the smell, deadened by the cold, still hit Thea like a muffling blanket as she opened the door. Feeling ill, she relieved herself in the sink, that being marginally clean. She was about to bolt out of this ghastly room when she saw a door on the far side of the toilet. Fighting down the bile taste in her mouth, she decided to investigate.

The room beyond had once been a screen-in sun porch, but was now a butcher’s locker. Heavy wire netting replaced the screens, and there were canvas shades pulled up on rollers over the screens. Sides of meat hung from the ceiling on heavy hooks. There were hump-shouldered deer, what looked like the remains of a bear, and half a dozen limbless human carcasses. They hung, neatly gutted, still in the frozen air, waiting to provide Margaret Cornelia with variety in her meals.

Slowly Thea crossed the small room, stark horror making her steps jerky. At last she reached out and touched one of the bodies, and her senses recoiled as she felt the cold, clay-colored flesh. Blindly she turned away from the carnage, wanting to cleanse her sight with the chaste coldness of the snow beyond the window. She fixed her eyes on the purple shadow that lay over the side of the mountain, and it was then that she saw the footprints. There must have been eight, perhaps ten sets of them, all quite new, all leading to the ancient building next door. Panic thudded in her chest, in her brain, and she clapped her hands over her mouth, turning away from the new threat outside. She collided with one of the bodies and had to fight her own rising fear before she could steady the swinging carcass and reset the hook in the shoulder.

Carefully telling herself that any disturbance to the body would surely be noticed by Margaret Cornelia’s bright, piercing eyes, Thea backed from the meat locker, revulsion flowing through her like strong acid. She made her way back past the encrusted toilet and ruined tub to the door, slipping out without touching anything in the room again. Once out the door, Thea leaned against it, as if to shut away forever the hideous things she had seen there. She knew that she must tell Evan, that they had to leave, and soon, or they would end up hanging from hooks with the others. As she neared the bottom of the stairs, she was hoping fervently that it would be bear or venison on the table.

“There you are,” cried Margaret Cornelia from the door to the kitchen. She was looking archly at Evan as Thea came into the room. “Sorry it’s a little messy in the bathroom right now, but you know how it is. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to clean up. It’s hard to keep up, with the snow and all. Women’s work is never done.”

Thea gave some neutral answer and glanced at Evan, trying to let him know she had to speak to him.

“Oh, now, you mustn’t be jealous, Missus Rossi,” Margaret Cornelia said, wagging a finger at Thea. “You can’t blame a girl for flirting with a handsome man, can you? Especially someone like Mister Rossi. I do think a beard makes a man look particularly virile, don’t you?”

It was a miserable meal: there were a few withered potatoes baked to near carbon in the stove. The meat, which was almost certainly venison, was lost in a thick brown sauce that tasted of rubber. All during supper, Margaret Cornelia kept up a flow of conversation that was so independent of her guests that they might not have been there. Her narration was carried on in a steady sing-song, so that it was hard to follow what she was saying. She told them how she had come to Oddle Bar from Squaw Valley, and how she had outsmarted all the people who had tried to trap or cheat or rob her over the years.

“I can tell when I’m safe,” she said, wiping a dribble of sauce from her chin with a stained and wrinkled damask napkin. “I get feelings about people, you know? I knew you were fine the moment I saw you. I could tell just like that. Oh, Missus Rossi is a little jealous of me. That’s because I’ve got all these fine things that she don’t. She’d like to have my pretty dresses, wouldn’t you, Missus. Rossi? You don’t have to worry. I don’t mind. It shows you got good taste, is all.”

“If it’s as dangerous here as you’ve said,” Thea began, ignoring most of what the strange old woman told them, “why don’t you move on? Or join up with some others? You won’t have to keep hiding then. You could fight the Pirates and anyone else off.” As she spoke, she was acutely aware of the terrible room almost directly overhead.

“I couldn’t do that, Missus Rossi. Dear me, no—it wouldn’t be smart. You know what it’s like when a lot of people get together to guard something? They become a target, a real easy target. I’m not ready to be anybody’s target, oh no. The Pirates spend all their time looking for places where people are. They wipe ‘em out. Kill ‘em all. Now, me, here by myself, no one knows I’m here. I keep it that way on purpose. I’ll make it on my own, thanks, and let the others be the sitting ducks.” Gleefully she beamed at Evan. “Course, one more person, though. I could manage that. I ain’t stingy.”

“Margaret Cornelia,” Evan said sternly. “There are two of us. We’re married.”

“Ah, that don’t mean much any more. You’re as married as you want to be, or not.” She turned to Thea, challenging her. “You can’t make him stay with you, Missus Rossi. I got a lot more to offer. I got a house, and food and pretty things… “

Evan spoke into the expectant silence. “We Italians are Catholic, Margaret Cornelia. Marriage is a sacrament.” He had got the tone right, startled at how much he sounded like Father Bowen. He had not seen Father Bowen for more than thirty years.

Margaret Cornelia had flared her nostrils, but dropped the subject with a sour smile. She returned to more stories of herself, of the glorious long-ago days at Squaw Valley. When she rose at last to serve coffee, the color and texture of glue, Thea made an impatient pull at Evan’s sleeve, all the while being careful not to let Margaret Cornelia see her fright.

“What is it, Thea?” Evan asked loudly enough for the words to carry to their hostess as she moved between dining room and kitchen. “Oh, I see. Let me help you with that.” On the pretext of doing something to her boot, he leaned over. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“Not here. Later. It’s bad.”

Evan nodded. “Let me check the other boot for you,” he said loudly.

“It’s dangerous, Evan. There are maybe ten people in the next building.”

She looked about nervously.

“Right.” He pulled himself up straight. “I think that’s got it now.”

“Thank you,” Thea said, stretching out her mouth grotesquely to a rictus as Margaret Cornelia came back with their dessert.

“You’ll like this,” she promised as she set the warped tray on the table. “And more coffee, if you want it. After a long walk like you had, a cup of coffee really hits the spot. This sponge cake is real good with it. You’ll see.”

Thea and Evan exchanged an edgy glance, but accepted what Margaret Cornelia offered them.

“We can have a talk in the morning. We’ll make plans then,” Margaret Cornelia announced, already rejoicing in her success.

As soon as they were alone in the cramped bedroom, Thea told Evan what she had seen. The tale came out in disjointed whispers as they pretended to undress.

“Fuck it,” Evan said softly. “I thought we might be able to stay here—kill her and take over at worst, if she tried to—”

“Evan!” Thea protested.

“What? She won’t hesitate to kill one or both of us. But she’s not alone, after all. So you’re right. We have to get out of here, and quickly.”

“Sssh! She’s listening, Evan. I know she is.” Thea glanced at the door. “She must have signaled them earlier. They could be coming now.”

“You’re right.” He touched his pack absently.

“Evan, we could end up hanging on hooks in there.”

He nodded. “All the more reason to move on. Get your pack ready, but carefully. Make it look like we’re getting ready for bed.” Evan said very softly as he pulled his pack nearer. He put his snowshoes over his arm, afraid to strap them on while still in the house.

With silent acceptance, Thea finished packing, pulling her load onto her back with stiff reluctance that told Evan her hip was worse.

“The door is barred: she’ll hear us if we try to open it,” Evan said as they prepared to leave. “It’s dark out. We’re taking a big chance. Be on guard.”

“We’re taking a bigger chance here. I don’t care about what’s out there, so long as we get away from here. I’d rather fight bear.” Thea shouldered her way past him to the door, grabbing the heavy bar that held it closed. With one tremendous surge of strength she lifted it free of its holdings. The thing made a sound like the breaking up of a ship on rocks.

“Go!” Evan urged, pushing her out the door ahead of him.

The snow was deep, but two days of bright sun had turned it crusty and that crust remained fairly firm beneath them as they ran.

Behind them a window shot open and a voice screeched after them, “You creeps! You
creeeeeeps!
” Moments later a rifle coughed, but the shot went wild.