The Secret: A Thriller (15 page)

The dead-animal smell got stronger as I approached Robbie’s bedroom. I moved slowly, needing to see what was ahead but at the same time not wanting to look. Had my son come home, injured or sick and seeking help? Had he been too weak to come find us in Great-Granddad’s basement?

I knew that didn’t make any sense: Robbie would have gone to the basement
first
. So it was probably something else entirely that stank. Not my son’s body, rotting on his bed…or had there been something he’d left behind, something he’d wanted to go home to reclaim before joining us?

Stop it
, I told myself. He wouldn’t have come here. He knew we were staying in the basement. He would know better than to come here on his own…wouldn’t he?

Except taking off on his own was exactly what he’d left the basement to
do
, wasn’t it? Still, he was a bright, responsible kid. He would know better than to get caught here. I was nearly sure. But the
smell…

Unless of course he was too sick to think and had staggered toward a familiar place because that was all he could manage. Or
had
he gone to the basement, but seen George (or Rebecca, transformed and terrifying to a boy who had wanted his mother’s comfort) and run back here?

I took a moment to relax my death-grip on the shotgun, motioned for Abby to wait where she was behind me, and pivoted into the doorway. Nothing large running at me…window unbroken…
what was that? On the bed?

I felt my heart stop. The sheets were disheveled, there was something on the bed,
there was something on the bed
.

But then I took a breath, and closed my eyes. Briefly. And opened them again.

I’d found the remains of a human leg. And I recognized it. Or I recognized the shredded remains of the jeans it had been wearing, anyway. And I figured the other bones I saw lying nearby had come from their owner’s other leg.

But not
Robbie’s
leg. This was what was left of Scraggly, from the front yard. Someone…something…had dragged parts of him up here. An afternoon snack, maybe, for a very sloppy eater.

“Dad?” Abby asked from outside the room. I looked back and saw her standing in the doorway.

“Not one of us,” I told her. “Just…part of one of the bodies from the front lawn.”

We stood staring at each other, possibly both thinking about that.
Not one of us
. Would it have occurred to me to say such a thing, before?

The hell with it, I decided. Neither Abby nor I needed to hang out in this room.

I glanced back as we left. I didn’t say anything, and it was ridiculous, but I kind of wanted to kick the bones around the room a few times. Because: here came the Apocalypse, and this neighbor of mine had
decided to steal my TV?

I turned away from Abby and grinned. I mean…what a moron.

Just the release of tension, of course, and Abby was with me. But I so wanted to laugh out loud.

As we headed back down the stairs I stopped mid-way, suddenly struck by how thoroughly my inner landscape had changed. Sure, the world was different now. But I wouldn’t always have found a partially-eaten human leg in my son’s bed
funny
.

Still, it was a normal reaction under the circumstances. Wasn’t it? I’d half-expected to find my dead son, after all, and I hadn’t. The laughter was out of sheer relief. Which was…reasonable. I thought. Maybe.

Then, as we left the house, I started to wonder who or what in the world—
besides
Robbie—would decide my son’s bedroom was a good place to munch on a snack. Because, if Robbie had been the one to do it…well, he might have taken after his mother, physically.

Meaning fangs. And hair.

He would still be my son, I told myself. I’d still love him. But would he really be the Robbie I knew anymore? To what degree had
Rebecca
still existed in her new body? Or should I think she’d finally realized her potential, if Tim was correct that people’s minds were suddenly helping them do exactly as they’d always dreamed? I still had trouble wrapping
my
mind around that one. I still wanted her back—as she’d been. Before.

If she was somehow still alive. Which I was pretty sure she wasn’t.

Suddenly nothing was funny anymore. But I still had someone to protect. I couldn’t spend my time
reacting
to every damned thing we came across.

“Sorry you had to see that, Abby,” I told her just before we walked out our front door—possibly for the last time.

She shrugged. “Just how the world is, Dad. Now. And anyway, parts of the bodies were humorous.”

I glanced at her, shocked, and then realized: she’d said
humerus
.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or ignore it. So I sighed, and bumped my hip into her shoulder. “You’re my bestest daughter, baby girl.”

“’Course I am, Daddy. Where to next?”

* * *

W
e headed roughly east. After a couple of blocks we veered off the road and climbed a fence to get to a creek. It might not be a completely private way out of town, but it had to be less conspicuous than taking the roads.

I wanted a place that was relatively sheltered, relatively undamaged, and out of the way. I couldn’t be sure but I suspected both Reverend Bob’s people and the National Guard were more of a danger to us than any strange creatures roaming the countryside. The creatures probably had their own individual agendas—or maybe not, but getting to know the new versions of Rebecca and George had left me less concerned about them and their…kin?…than about organized human action.

If any of us were still human.

Regardless: people, especially if organized and purposeful, would tend to use roads. So we needed a place away from major roads. An old farm, maybe, or the remnants of one. A cabin in the woods would be okay. Anyway, I wanted trees for cover. Except for the scrub woods we’d just left that meant heading up into the mountains. Too much of the land down here in the valley had been cleared.

We hiked for most of the day. We ate salty sludge of various descriptions straight from unheated cans, and if creek water was dangerous we were going to suffer the consequences of drinking it. But I suspected any trouble with the water had resulted from human contamination, and the mountain creeks would be reasonably safe. Giardia aside, anyway, but that was the least of our worries.

As dusk neared I started looking for a place to settle for the night, and had nearly decided on hollowing out a hiding spot in a thick stand of rhododendron when Abby grabbed my arm. “Dad! Look!”

I spun, bringing up the shotgun—but she was pointing at the side of a mountain. “Baby girl? What are—”

“I saw a reflection!”

A what? But then I saw what she meant: there was a building up there. House-sized, or maybe a large cabin, with a metal roof painted brown and green. Hard to spot, even looking right at it. But something metal up there was moving—spinning, probably—and it glinted faintly in the sun.

I considered my suddenly sharp-eyed daughter. Her eyes had been a little weak, before. Rebecca and I had started her on exercises, hoping she wouldn’t need glasses.

Whatever. I could worry about that later. Maybe we’d found our new home.

“Follow me,” I said quietly. “Let’s go check it out. Carefully.”

* * *

I
worried about the camo-painted roof as we picked our way up the side of the mountain. On the surface that seemed like a great idea, and it might be useful if we found the place unoccupied—but the sort of person who would do that might
also
be the kind to sit tight at home when the world went crazy. And shoot at strangers. Worse:
hit
them.

Actually, I found myself thinking, it might be better to either cover the roof with brush or repaint it. A roof that said “I’m hiding
right here
” might be worse than one painted bright pink. The camo might hide the place somewhat, and discourage casual hikers who did spot it from wandering too close, but any attention it
did
attract would tend to be entirely too serious. I figured whoever owned the place might not be the best poker player ever: the paint was a serious tell.

Also whatever the shiny gizmo was needed to come down.

* * *

T
he cabin’s front door stood open, propped by a rocking chair on the porch. I’d left Abby behind a pile of rocks (though not without worrying about letting her out of my sight) and circled the place but hadn’t seen anyone in the area. Or
any
sign of recent habitation—there were what looked like metal wires, probably for laundry, strung between two T-topped poles. But nothing hanging on them. There was no smell of cooking, or burning wood either.

I’d seen a fire pit not far from the front door, and from farther up the mountain I could look almost to the bottom of it: no gray ashes visible. Which probably meant it hadn’t been used recently. A brick outhouse—somebody’s sense of humor at work, maybe—sat slightly downhill of the cabin, and…well, there was nobody inside, but it
had
been used. Fairly recently. But that might have meant a few days or weeks ago, not necessarily since…before everything had changed.

On the other hand somebody inside might be eating out of cans. And smart enough not to advertise with a fire. And leaving the cabin’s door open to hear what happened nearby.

If I’d been by myself I might have settled in to watch for a few hours. But Abby was a kid, and I didn’t know how long she’d stay put. So I worked my way around behind the cabin again, circling a field of boulders to one side of it—which meant climbing for a while—to where a back door also yawned open and I could see a semi-clear trail leading to one of our winding mountain roads.

“Hello the house!” I called as I walked down the trail, being as obvious as I could—and not coming from anything remotely like the direction in which Abby was (I hoped) waiting patiently in the rocks.

No response.

I walked up to the back door and knocked. “Anybody home?”

No response. I went in.

Saw nobody. And called my daughter to join me.

“D
addy? There’s something here.”

I turned quickly—I’d just decided to leave the cabin’s door open, because there were birds singing outside and I figured they’d stop if anybody came close. Like the cabin’s owner, for instance.

Abby was standing on an area rug that covered the area under and around a futon in the back right corner of the main room. There was a small kitchen off to the right side but otherwise there wasn’t much to the place. A recliner sitting beside the rug. A woodstove in the back left corner—cold; I’d checked.

She was frowning in concentration. “Under my feet, Daddy.”

I cocked my head to the side. She didn’t seem upset. “A bug?” I asked.

“No, silly. Let’s move the rug.”

She walked a few steps and tried to pull it, but the thing was heavy and also held down by the futon. I grinned and started to move forward to help, but she got an irritated look and…jerked the rug out from under the futon, rolled it up quickly, and leaned it against a wall.

My mind spun. I went to look at the trap door she’d uncovered. It was absolutely smooth, well built, hard to see at all except for a finger-sized opening containing a ring to use for lifting it.

She
could not
have felt anything suspicious from standing on the rug.

She
could not
have moved the rug.

I regarded my daughter carefully. She seemed mildly embarrassed, as if she’d revealed something she hadn’t meant to—her expression reminded me of days past, when I’d discovered such things as stuffed-animal haircuts and her mother’s jewelry wadded and twisted under her bed.

Whatever was going on with her…
she
already knew all about it. She wasn’t surprised.

We needed to talk. Or I wanted to talk. But I decided to let it go for the moment. Until…later. Sometime
not like this
, when we’d be able to quit looking over our shoulders for a while. “Any idea what’s down there?” I asked.

She shrugged.

I shrugged back. “Okay, baby girl. Go watch the front for a few minutes. I’m going to check this out.”

The door lifted, but it was heavy—built strongly, possibly to avoid letting people find it by casually stepping on its concealing rug, I figured. After I got the thing moving I had to slip my hands under it, squat, and lift. Fortunately there was a handle.

Beneath was a ladder, descending into a dark room with what looked like a dirt floor.

Once the trap door was open I leaned it against the wall. There was a pattern of scratches and dents there. Maybe, I tried to tell myself,
that
was what Abby had seen. Though it didn’t explain her sudden feat of strength.

“Been wondering about this place,” I told Abby. “The way it’s arranged. Not a lot of storage up here on this level.”

Still staring out the front door, she twitched a shoulder and didn’t answer.

Wondering just what it meant that she wasn’t curious enough to even glance toward the opened trap door, I walked over to a shelf and picked up an oil lamp, then used the cigarette lighter lying next to it.

“Stay up here,” I told my daughter. I’d been half-expecting a stench of death when I’d opened the thing up, even though it didn’t make any sense. After all, the cabin’s owner couldn’t very well have crawled down there to die, closed the door, and also moved the rug and futon to hide it.

But still—I didn’t want Abby down there until I’d checked it out.

* * *

W
e had guns. Canned food. Ammunition. Candles, and more oil for the lamp I’d brought, and four more lamps.

The underground room was a survivalist’s cache, obviously. I wondered what had happened to the owner. Maybe he’d…changed…and simply left it all behind. Would he have gone out for some reason, intending to return, and left the cabin’s doors standing open? I doubted it. Something had surprised him. Maybe himself. Maybe not.

I climbed back up the ladder. “I guess this is home, Abby-girl. For now.”