August Ansel - The Attic

They wrestled the five-gallon bucket down the ladder, and Arie filled her skirt with carrots, kale, and tomatoes. Her aim was foods they could eat raw. While Handy bolted the sky panel, Arie lit a few candles and stooped to check on Renna.

Her dark hair lay in matted clumps across the makeshift pillow, and she gave off a smell of sour musk, but it was nothing like the powerful stink she’d thrown earlier. Dark circles ringed her eyes like bruises. She lay on her unbitten side, hands tucked beneath her cheek like a child’s, sleeping deeply. Arie touched the poulticed wounds with the lightest pressure, checking that they were still damp. The smallest one was starting to dry, and Arie dampened it with a few drops of tea. Renna didn’t stir in the least. “She’s sweating some,” Arie said. “That’s a good thing.”

Handy was at the work table, wiping down carrots with a damp rag. “Maybe the fever will break?”

“Maybe.” Arie knew the problem was deeper than a little fever, but if the plantain could draw out the foul infection in the larger wounds, Renna might live. “We’ll eat a cold meal,” she said. “We don’t dare make fire right now with someone maybe around.”

“Are you sure it was a person?”

She glanced at Handy. “It’s been awhile, but I haven’t lost the difference between person and beast. Hungry?”

He nodded, barely visible in the dim attic light. The spinning vent above him circled over his features in a dizzy spin of half-moons. “I’ll eat,” he said.

“There’s jerky. Rabbit.” She told him where to find it. They sat side by side on the Packard seat sofa and ate. Handy rolled the stringy meat in a leaf of kale and popped cherry tomatoes one at a time.

“So you don’t see people,” he said.

“Almost never anymore. At first, yes. A few. I know there were some right around here who lived through the first week of the Pink. I could hear voices now and again. Crying.” She washed down a bite of the salty meat with some water and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Hardly anyone came down around here, though. Why would they? Dead-end street.”

“Scavenging.”

She bit off a chunk of carrot. It was sweet and earthy. “Yes, there was some of that for a while. I tried barricading things, but it never kept anyone out. Bolt a door and they bust a window. I was forever running up here and hoping no one would think to look. Scared all the time.”

He looked at her levelly. “Are you scared now?”

She leaned into the old seatback. “Fear kind of burned out. Every time I came through, I felt the One Thing come over me.”

“One thing.”

“We’re an anomaly,” she said, and hesitated. “You know the word.”

He nodded once.

“Humans used to be part of the One Thing.”

He wiped his hands on his heavy jeans and said nothing.

She shook her head with a little snort. “I imagine you’re holding onto Daddy’s teaching, though. ‘Exercise dominion over the bounty of creation.’ That it?”

“You want more water?” he said. He fetched them each a fresh mugful.

“What would you give for coffee?” she said, and sighed.

“Coffee. Well hell, I barely remember it.”

“I remember,” she whispered. The dark bitterness, the rush. “There must be something you dream about,” Arie said. “What comes back to you at night? What shows up?”

There was a staccato clittering across the roof peak. They both went still. It came again. “Raven,” Handy said.

Arie stood, took his mug. “Let’s hope it stays awhile,” she said. “It will sound an alarm if something ugly turns up.” She rinsed the cups in her little enameled pan and set them aside.

“With the dead down there, it will stick around.”

“There’ll be feasting.”

“There’s a whetstone here,” she said. “I assume Daddy Mack taught you to use it?”

“That fell to Mother.”

“You must be kidding,” she said. “I never saw Mammy Delonda lay her hand to the stone in my life.” She handed him her blades. “Nor to much else. Here, sharpen yours, too.”

He moved to a spot on the floor that had a little extra light from a porthole window set in the west wall, far up under the peak of the gables, and began to work the edge of Arie’s knife first, deliberate in all his movements.

Watching him, having another breathing soul in this space—two of them besides her—rubbed at her mind. She’d forgotten the everlasting distraction of other people. It was like having an itch crop up, a relentless, restless gnawing of possibilities—where is he? what is he doing? what will happen next? Her eyes sought the labyrinth and began to circle. She longed to stand up and trace it with her finger, but didn’t want Handy watching. Back and forth her eyes went. The raven’s talons skittered across the roof, then it croaked from down in the street. Into the center. Reverse and travel out, as the thin and gritty sound of the whetstone rose and fell. In, around. Out, around.

She slept.

It was full dark when she woke, hearing footsteps below. She held perfectly still. She opened her eyes. The attic was black inside and smelled of people. It took moments before she thought to wonder where Handy was, whether he heard the intruder. Rolling onto her stomach, she positioned herself over the heat exchange.

It was too dark to see anything. To her right, several feet away, Renna was breathing deeply, making a little snore on the outbreath, and Arie wished she could put a hand over the girl’s face to stop the sound. The intruder in the rooms of ruin was being exceptionally furtive, moving in a slow circuit and managing to avoid the noisiest debris. She clutched the shaft of her short spear and listened, willing Renna and Handy to stay silent.

When the footsteps moved down the hallway and into the back bedroom, Arie rose into a crouch, balancing like a sprinter waiting for the starter’s pistol. She took a deep breath and walked swiftly and softly on the balls of her feet to the car seat sofa, meaning to add her weight to the top of the inside hatch. As quiet as she meant to be, the attic floorboards seemed to thud and creak under her. She had her hands stretched into the dark, feeling for the sofa’s steel frame, but when she got there the seat was pushed aside.

Heart thudding dully at the base of her throat, Arie squatted and felt her hands around the edge of the hatch. It was unbolted and slightly ajar. The intruder was right below her, almost in the closet. Her eyes widened in the dark. The pale wooden rectangle of the hatch was visible to her; she stared at it, breathing shallowly through her mouth. She waited there, short spear raised. Just as the intruder entered the closet right below her and fumbled at the shelves, she moved onto the hatch and knelt. There was a nudge from underneath, just the slightest feeling of pressure under her, and a hesitation. Her mouth had gone dry. Another push under her feet, harder this time, and a little grunt. The thick plywood lifted and dropped minutely, not more than an eighth of an inch. She breathed shallowly. Her right hand trembled with the effort of gripping the short spear. She didn’t weigh much, but with her weight on it the hatch would be tough to move from the confines of the closet below. There was a little hesitation beneath her, and for one awful moment Arie imagined a gun aimed at the hatch, could almost feel the bullet punch through the wood and into her lower body. “My life is my own.” She mouthed the words soundlessly. “I sojourn.”

Knuckles rapped the hatch. Softly, a gentle enquiry.

“Ariela.”

She dropped the short spear. It hit the floor with a thud and clatter.

“Let me up.” It was Handy.

She stood and yanked the hatch open. Shaking, she clasped her hands together to keep from grabbing hold of him. “What are you thinking?” she whispered. “I was ready to put my spear into you.”