Alex Adams: White Horse

My captor creeps now, each step deliberately pressed into the damp grass. He pulls me with him and I see no good reason not to obey. He has all the information and all I have is a sense of foreboding that fills me with frosty dread.

When we reach the window, he shoves me into the shadows, holds a finger to his lips, lifts his face to the glass.

I want to see, too. I need to. Even if all the horrors in all the world are collected in this barn, I need to look inside.

He senses my urgency, the fair-haired man with cheekbones high enough and sharp enough to slice cold cuts, and indulges my desire.

From beams thicker than my thigh, hooks dangle, Spanish question marks that ask a question for which I wish I had no answer. But I do; I know what happens in this place and I wish so hard I didn’t. I’m a city girl, born and raised. My meat used to come with price tags and a dose of carbon monoxide to keep it red. But here, meat moved in herds.

The village has survivors and they’ve gathered, the half dozen of them wrapped in clothes that will never know good days. My gaze zooms in. Pans and scans. Breaks everything into can-deal chunks. Takes in the nest these once-people have created. Bones and rust-colored straw litter the barn. Decaying gore. Old bones, judging from the meatless sheen, from chickens and other livestock. They’ve been picked clean, snapped in two, the marrow slurped from their centers. Heaps of cans rust in the corners. Empty food wrappers form a carpet that will never rot. Tools hang on the walls, abandoned. No more harvests under a bulging autumn moon.

One of the villagers breaks away, crawls across the floor to a wooden bucket jerked from a well, but his pose is anything but penitent. A row of jagged bones forms painful-looking spikes along his spine. They shudder as he swallows. When he’s done, he sits on his haunches, rivulets racing down his face, dripping onto his food-stained chest. Animal blood has dried on his tattered shirt many times over, then soaked anew. The others crouch in a crude circle, staring up, up, at some object of fascination. So I follow the path of their obsession. My gaze slides along the networked beams until it catches on something blond and blue. My heart lurches.

Lisa.

Desperation and terror must have pushed her up so high. I can’t see the how , but it doesn’t matter: she made it to relative safety.

My shoulders twitch with need-to-go, need-to-get-to-her. The stranger holds me back, steers me until Lisa disappears from view. He turns us around, walks us back to the village proper.

I clutch at the damp lapels of his jacket. It’s too dark to see here, but I remember it being the drab green of all things military. “You said she was dead.”

“She is dead. Or she will be when I blow that place off the planet.”

Now I see the burden he carries: a backpack filled with secrets.

“It was you at the church, wasn’t it?”

He doesn’t confirm, only grunts.

“You can’t do it. Not with her in there. I won’t let you.”

“You have no choice.”

The jar is heavier thanit looks, as though its core is filled with sand. Or maybe good intentions. Silence is the only protest as I walk it backwards and lean its top half onto the soft ottoman.

Something shifts inside. There’s a whisper like old, discarded snake skins rubbing together. A chill tiptoes down my spine’s spurred steps.

My knees dig into the beige carpet’s level loop pile as I kneel to follow Dr. Rose’s recommendation. Maybe there’s a clue here about what lies beneath. I look. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing but more of the same. Smooth, with a hint of chalkiness. It’s left a faint dusting of itself on the carpet, and I can’t help but run my fingertip across the cheap fibers. The residue is soft and silky like cornstarch.

A frustrated sigh rides my breath. I wanted there to be something. Even if it was a Made in China sticker.

This time Dr. Rose doesn’twait for me to speak. We settle into our respective chairs and roles, or so I think until he sets his notepad aside. Instinctively, my legs cross and I lace my fingers together, clasping them over my top knee. A model of cautious propriety.

He drinks in my defensive pose with his dark gaze, then knocks it aside with his question.

“Do you want me, too?”

“Yes. And no.”

He leans back, flashes a smile that makes me wish we hadn’t met here, in this place where my mental health is a question mark.

“I’ll take that. For now.”

Inside I shiver because for now means there will be a later, and he thinks I’m worth the wait. The pursuit. But part of me flares because I turned him down, and here he is steamrolling over me like my “No, thank you” was a meaningless thing.

For a moment he watches me and I feel naked. Usually it’s just my mind feeling exposed here, but now it’s my body as well. My nipples tighten. I swallow hard.

“Did you have the dream?” he asks.

“What?”

He never goes first. Never prompts me. But here he is changing all the rules. The notebook is back on his lap and he’s sitting there, pen idle in his right hand. That much, at least, is normal.

“The jar.”

“Oh. That.” The jar, the jar, the stinking jar. The tumor in my life. The jar is like having cancer and trying to figure out where you went wrong so its growth was nurtured. Was it the butter? The margarine? Too much beef? Too much watching and waiting on the microwave to ding? What had I done that someone felt compelled to enter my home and give me an antediluvian mystery? I pick through the bones of my life looking for clues and find nothing.

“Yes,” I say.

He waits.

“It’s the color of scorched cream.” My hands reach into thin air and grasp invisible handles. And stop. They sink to my knees, massage the patella. “We do this every week and nothing changes.”

“Did you look at the bottom?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Wherever it’s from, it’s not made in China. That I know of.”

We share a tense smile.

“What do you think is inside?” he asks.

“I couldn’t guess. Most likely nothing.”

“Have you wondered?”

“No,” I lie.

“But something has changed: this week you looked at the bottom. Next time I want you to see if you can look inside. How do you feel about that?”

My hands ball into fists. “Fine.”

Dawn comes in the samegray cloak she always wears these days. Shades of blue would be more becoming, or maybe pearls and pinks and peaches, because somewhere out there it’s spring—or should be. My eyelids fly open to the welcome feeling of no nausea and the less welcome feeling of a two-by-four beating against the inside of my skull in some kind of erratic Morse code. Pressing my hands against my stomach, I perform a half crunch and my muscles tense in protest. Concave, although slightly closer to flat than before.

“Amino acids.”

“What?”

My captor is crouched on the floor, fastening wires to a cigarette-pack-sized block of sweating plasticine.

“You still want to save your friend?”

“Yes,” I rasp.

“Be my guest.” He doesn’t look up.

“What about amino acids?”

“They are the building blocks of life. Combined in the right order, they make proteins. DNA is made of amino acids. Probably they will kill her and eat her. Human flesh has the amino acids they need.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Are you menstruating?”

“What?”

“You’re angry. Women are often angry when they menstruate. It is the hormones.”

I rub my head until the tapping subsides to a tick.