The Two That Remained Read online

  Ryan’s thorough search of the downstairs turned up no useful medical supplies, other than a pair of Scooby Doo band aids and an Ace wrap. Even the liquor cabinet was full of empty bottles he might could have used to clean their wounds.

  Upstairs, the search turned out much the same. Bathroom cabinets were empty of their desired goods, but were plentiful in cotton balls, hair gel, Old Spice, and Colgate. The master bedroom had a lavish California king, complete with red silk sheets, antique stained glass lamps on bedside tables, and a sleeping skeleton clutching a TV remote. A single dust-covered picture rested on the nightstand, displaying a family of three that was happy, but not too happy, posing at Niagara Falls. On the other side was a wooden box festooned in fake emeralds, rubies and citrine. The lid flipped open to reveal a plastic bag of something green and crunchy that found its way into Ryan’s pocket.

  He checked the other bedrooms. Both were empty but for a twin mattress and a dresser in one, walls painted blue with a Cardinals baseball themed trim following the top. A lone hardball and catcher’s glove sat waiting in the hall beside the door for its owner, a young boy whose parents, after five or ten years of marriage had decided divorce was the best option, rather than having him grow up in a house with a pot-smoking Glenn Quagmire, Dean Martin wannabe. His mom had tried again and again to give this stupid man she’d fallen in love with a chance, she really had, but in the end was forced to take her child away from him.

  Ryan knew in his heart that this was where things could’ve ended up with Lillian and he, and it would have been his fault. They needed to work things out but hadn’t. They’d both let matters slip over time.

  He pulled Emily close and left. There was nothing here for them.

  Through the curtains of the front windows, Ryan peeked out at the street. Emily now felt heavy as a blanket-wrapped lead ingot in his arms. She whimpered incessantly in her sleep, hand reaching up for her injured shoulder. Her head felt warmer than it had earlier. He had to get something to clean the wounds. There was no time.

  He opened the front door, took a look to his right and didn’t see any sign of Cerberus. He waited as long as he dared, scanning either side of the street retaken by nature. Mr. Jones’s house was just next door.

  With a half-comatose Emily clutched in his arms he went for it.

  Chapter 12

  Cerberus did not chase after them. Ryan hoped the beast had given up and not just lost their trail. The dash between houses, though painful on Ryan’s bum ankle, was otherwise uneventful, and he could have cried with happiness. He didn’t know how much more he could take, or even wanted to try to take.

  He smashed open Mr. Jones’s front window, just as he had the divorced man’s back door, and reached inside, careful not to cut himself on glass. A moment later Emily and he were laid up on a sofa in the front parlor.

  “Shit,” he hissed and rubbed his ankle. The pain was getting worse. He needed to search the house without delay but the idea of standing was almost too much to bear. Emily groaned again, and after a moment, her pain granted him all the motivation he needed to push through his own discomfort. Her needs came first.

  “Don’t be a candy ass, Sharpe.”

  The aroma of Mr. Jones’s house, despite however much time had passed, could have been bottled into a perfume that smelled of nursing home, marketed under the name “Geriatric Especiale.” The peeling floral wallpaper was haunted with the scent of dead potpourri and elder coffee spirits. A miasma of mothball gas clung to the orthopedic bed, self-rising lounge chair, white undershirts and collared business-casual affairs hanging in the closet. A forgotten denture glass on the kitchen counter reminded Ryan of his grandmother. He could almost feel the Polident sticking to his skin, as well as the scent of lavender lotions and medicated cough drops which accompanied each glancing blow from one of her hugs. He could hear the sound of dry, smacking lips and clearing the throat from binding mucus. He wondered if tapioca pudding or Ensure might be in the fridge, but then he remembered. This was the house of a war vet, not some average civilian of advanced years.

  He checked in the master bathroom, where the worst of the funky scents originated, and found in the medicine cabinet exactly what he was after. A dark brown bottle with an eroding label said in red letters, “Hydrogen Peroxide Topical Solution USP.”

  “Yesssss,” Ryan said, grinning into the mirror. He hardly recognized the sunken blood-shot eyes that stared back.

  They went into the parlor where the nicer furniture was kept. It smelled less of withering death. Emily’s blood-soaked dress slipped off as he checked her wounds.

  “No,” she protested, he brought the open bottle closer. “No. No. Shew shew.” She started to sob, crocodile tears spilling down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Emme, but this will hurt.” He leaned her back and poured the peroxide into her shoulder wounds. She bucked and shouted, but he held her still, letting it sizzle. More spilled over the scratches on her bare chest and legs. He hated hurting her, but it had been almost two hours, best he could tell, since the attack. The wounds needed to be cleaned immediately or she could be in serious trouble. She might even still be.

  After a couple of minutes, he removed the cotton balls taken from the divorced man’s house and cleaned off the remaining peroxide. Her sobs had now become angry sniffles of unfocused protest. He redressed the wounds and changed her diaper, then cleaned his own dog bite. There was no swelling around the pair of half-moon punctures. A good sign.

  He stumbled back into the bathroom, letting Emily walk on her own, and found, not aspirin or Tylenol, but Anacin. He took a guess at the dose and ate the pills. He crunched a few of them into dust and poured them into Emily’s water.

  “It’s medicine, baby. It’ll make you feel better.” He wasn’t sure if it would treat her fever, but it would help with the pain. She guzzled down her drink and gave him a quizzical look.

  He rummaged through the house, realizing that perhaps this deadly cloud of mothball dust was indeed a good thing after all; the house was insect-free. The fabric on beds or sofas, in closets or in drawers had been left alone. If his throat didn’t burn he would have started singing.

  “After a little getting used to, we could maybe make a home here. It’s not so bad, right?” He ran a finger down the wall, feeling a greasy texture. “Mr. Jones’s fashion is a few years out of style, but I can rock it.”

  Emily chuffed and frowned.

  “I guess you’re right. It’s not home.”

  She shook her head.

  He saw light spilling in from the back of the house where he felt a den might be, but didn’t investigate for now. A woman’s shirt, small, that didn’t smell of death, was in a bedroom drawer. Emily was changed into this instead of her bloody rags.

  “Now, Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, where do you keep the rations?” he said, checking the pantry and laundry room. He hummed as he went back into the kitchen, starting with the leftmost cabinets, and worked his way right mumbling his actions as a tune. Halfway down on the bottom, he found a cabinet stuffed with brown boxes and plastic brown bags. He laid them out on the laminated countertops. The boxes were rectangular with the words, “Meal, Combat, Individual C,” in bold black letters. The bags accompanying them were adorned with the Department of Defense logo and the words, “Meal, Ready to Eat, Individual.”

  He held up one of the boxes and laughed. “Hah, I always thought they were called sea rations, not C-Rations. Like, rations for the Navy. So much for explaining this one, Dad. I risked our lives to invade a house that had a Naval flag on the porch, thinking it would have food. Whew, we got lucky.” Setting the box down, he removed his pocket knife and opened one of the “fresher” MREs. These were fewer in quantity than the C-Rations. They’d need to go easy on them.

  “Hungry, baby?” he asked Emily and she nodded, making his heart flutter she felt good enough to eat. They took a seat at Mr. Jones’s vinyl-topped green kitchen table.

  The thick plastic bag of the MRE contained a
myriad of smaller bags, contents triple vacuum sealed. He ripped open a single serving pack of cheese spread and what was called “wheat snack bread,” and spackled cheese on thick. He handed Emily the crackers one at a time. She ate greedily, not allowing a single calorie go to waste. He flipped the plastic pack over and realized it was “cheese spread with jalapenos.” She didn’t seem to care if it was spicy. She wanted more.

  Splitting a single molasses cookie with her, he tried his best to use the MRE heater sleeve as he chewed, humming. It required a small portion of water to activate, to warm up the chili and macaroni package, the star performer of their fancy take-out dinner.

  They took turns eating bites from Ryan’s plastic spoon. The food was edible, as it was, but the pasta was a little slimy, the sauce a bit funky. Ryan skipped a bite if Emily was willing to take another. Her needs first. He used the cocoa pack to make a chocolate drink and split it between them. His stomach hadn’t ceased its growling by the time they were done with it, tempting him to open another pack for round two. He held back that urge and tried to chew the gum instead.

  “Blech,” he said, spitting the red chicklets out onto the floor. He thought it might have been cinnamon or cinnamint in its former life, but now it was cinnadust. And if the rumors were true, so ex-military friends had once said, he might be shitting himself senseless in a few hours.

  Emily laughed and started to mimic his action, taking some of her water and spitting it on the floor. “’Mon. Dada.”

  “Quit that, you nut head.” He tousled her hair and accidentally brushed her shoulder. She drew away from his fingers, and so he kissed the air before her makeshift bandage to make it all better.

  “Okay. Well, we have enough for weeks, but this is gonna be a bit—a witch to carry back.” He stuffed his pack with as many rations as he could manage, around half of what Mr. Jones had in stock.

  As he worked, Emily rifled through a lower cabinet filled with aluminum pots and pans. She efficiently unloaded them, stacked them on the other side of the linoleum floored kitchen, banged on them for a minute with a wooden spoon while singing nonsense, then put away the stock pot in a different cabinet than where it had started. It was her way of organizing. Was she claiming this place as her own? They weren’t staying.

  Ryan went through the pantry and found other items that might be useful. An unopened tin of coffee, a large bag of unspoiled rice, and several cans of Spam.

  “Worth a shot,” he mused, turning the Spam over on its end. He’d never been a fan of it, but it was a well preserved meat that only a cardiologist wouldn’t recommend when starving.

  He tested the weight of his pack, stumbling around the kitchen on his ankle.

  “That’s all I can carry. What do you think?”

  Emily was packing her backpack, stuffing it with napkins and potholders and a can of tuna without much of a label. “Done!” she declared. “’Mon. Dada, more.”

  “Good work. That’s all we need. Here, come with Daddy.”

  She followed him into the den, hand in hand, leaving her backpack beside his.

  The den was a dark room that reeked much like the rest of the house, but with the added feature of stale cigars. It had wood panel walls and substantial cherry furnishings from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The TV, a bulky Zenith convex set circa ‘93 with a built-in VCR, was set within a tall entertainment center with double doors. Wires collected around the outside of the furniture like brown noodles, running to a silver RCA stereo receiver with two matching cloth-covered speakers. The floor was bare wood, covered by only a slip of carpet with several holes, at its center where a flimsy coffee table stood like a bouquet. On the far wall hung several picture frames containing medals from various wars in various eras. Korea. Vietnam. And above them all, a black and white POW/MIA flag.

  You are not forgotten. But to Ryan, memory was already fading.

  Beside the blocky, red checkered couch was an overstuffed recliner. Ryan would have loved to kick back and relax. Let his ankle get some relief, maybe help Emily to a proper nap on his chest. Too bad it would never happen.

  A set of bones lazed back in the chair, one arm folded over its lap, the other having fallen off the side. A slender table, bathed in light streaming in from the only uncovered window, held a fountain pen and an old letter hand printed on personalized stationery. Ryan stepped forward, keeping Emily safely at his back. In the skeleton’s lap lay a black pistol.

  “Why did you do it?” Ryan asked. He reached out, took the gun, and found the safety before Emily could— Shaking his head, he spun the letter around, forefinger touching only the top corner.

  I’m sorry, but I was tired of being alone. I have been forgotten. God, please forgive me of this sin.

  -LT Colonel Frank Jones II.

  There were pale stains on the ceiling, a perfect pattern of splatter originating from the back of Mr. Jones’s unhinged skull.

  Ryan considered the letter for an instant, wondering when it had been written. Did this man, who had seen war and evil-doing for so long, decide to end his life after a long career just days surrounding what had happened? Ryan felt he had seen him the day they went to UBL, maybe two days before at most. But had it been longer? Had Mr. Jones done this to himself weeks before quiet death had come to pass? Or when he found himself in the position Ryan was now? Alone.

  “I was tired of being alone,” Ryan repeated from Mr. Jones’s note. A faint howl from outside reached his ears.

  The gun became heavy. It felt wrong in his hand, like a demon wishing to be freed, fighting tooth and nail to erode Ryan’s mental resolve.

  Ryan checked the clip, found eight rounds loaded, and made a decision. He turned to Emily and smiled, wide and bloodless, leading her into the front bathroom where he closed the door.

  “Daddy will be right back,” he said, and she cried. He hated leaving her in the dark alone. It was too much like his fearful vision.

  Fury welled up inside him as he pounded down the hallway, dwelling on Emily’s injuries. Her wails faded into the background of his bloodlust. He swung the front door wide and whistled with his fingers. The gun’s safety was flicked off.

  Something scurried up the street at his call.

  He fired once over the house across the street just to be sure. The gun barked like it should.

  Air rushed into him.

  And there it was a moment later, a dog the size of a Miata, brown and matted and spewing copious amounts of languid spittle. Its teeth drew back as it came for him, its rage the fuel of a murderous engine.

  Ryan waited. He hated guns. Hated what they did to society and how easy it was for people to get ahold of them who shouldn’t. The majority of violence in the city involved guns, and so he couldn’t help but believe that if people had less access to these foul demons, maybe more would still be alive. But right now, in this moment, dancing with a demon, he was falling in love. It was calling to him and he was listening, leading it past his defenses and into his innermost heart. With this demon’s power, he was going to enact revenge over what this motherfucking beast had done to his daughter. What it had done to him. This gun was his tool and no one else’s.

  Ryan began to sing, “Bippity Boppity Boo” from Cinderella, its melody morphing into something between a dirge and a madman’s signature chant.

  “Put it together,” he sang, both hands on the grip of the demon weapon, one eye focused down the barrel. “And what have you got?”

  When Cerberus reached the porch steps, Ryan pulled the trigger, belching installments of a fiery currency that would pay the balance on this beast’s non-stop, one-way ticket past Hades and straight into Hell.

  Cerberus yelped and fell at his feet, tumbling to a stop while giving a final death rattle like a punctured balloon. Ryan stomped on its head with a boot heel; once, then twice, then kicked it off the porch.

  Ryan screamed aimlessly.

  “Don’t you fuck with my family! You hear me?” he roared, voice echoing down the empty str
eets into the city.

  When no one responded, he took their answer to be yes.

  Chapter 13

  “Peter, this is Ryan, my husband. Ryan, this is Peter, executive director of Project Sunshine at UBL.”

  Peter extended a clammy selection of fingers and gave Ryan’s hand a shake. His grip was limp, bringing to mind visions of slimy scales and fish guts. It made Ryan’s shoulders twitch.

  A fit male server in black pants with a pressed white shirt and black vest, approached their trio with a silver tray of champagne in fluted glasses, as well as several opened bottles of local brews. Peter carefully took one of the beers as if a solid grip might just splinter the bottle and injure him as a result.

  “Eh huhm,” Peter said, clearing his throat. The server inclined his head and produced a straw from his shirt pocket. Peter proceeded to drop the straw into the opening of his bottle and take a ginger sip from the back corner of his mouth.

  Ryan hurriedly grabbed one of the remaining Schlafly Pale Ales before the server could make it too far. He took a pull from the neck of the bottle like a real man, not an eccentric. Peter’s plucked eyebrows danced with contempt.

  The crystal ballroom of Crowne Plaza was filled with nicely dressed people. Ryan knew most of them were not employees at UBL, unlike his wife. In fact, only a handful were, and they were easy to spot from their awkward natures among the buzzing crowd. The majority of those gathered were influential bigwigs, local officials, rich patrons, and scientific savants, hobnobbing and exchanging political niceties over cheap alcohol served in fancy glasses. These sorts of events were not Ryan’s element. He liked drinking, and people, but the snippets of conversation he’d picked up while roving around the room were shallow and pedantic.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Ryan said, extending the neck of his bottle in order to give Peter’s a friendly clink. He already didn’t like the guy but he was playing nice. That was politicking, right?