Peter Clines - Ex-Communication

The dead thing had the same jaw and cheekbones as Hector. She decided right then to say she hadn’t seen any sign of the old man. She wouldn’t want to know her family was still walking around.

She left the ex standing in the driveway and walked through the gate. There was a flowerbed that had grown out into the small yard. A few cobblestones in the grass led up to the big wooden door. It swung open when she pushed on it.

She was looking for a wooden box three feet long and eight or nine inches square. It was padlocked shut. Hector thought it might have a little plaque on the lid, but he couldn’t remember for sure.

The cottage was small, and there weren’t too many places to hide something that size. Madelyn looked in both closets, under the bed, then went through each drawer of the dresser. She checked under the couch and behind the washer and dryer.

There was a loft above the washer, but it was just filled with dusty paperbacks. Hector’s grandfather had loved science fiction. She wondered how he’d felt when the dead started to walk.

The fridge was disgusting. The kitchen cabinets were jammed full of pots and pans of every size and a huge selection of dishes. She even looked in the dishwasher. Someone had run it before the end of the world. The glasses and silverware were still sparkling clean.

The cottage didn’t have a basement, which seemed weird to her. Growing up on the East Coast, almost everybody had a cellar. It just felt like the old man’s home was missing something important.

There wasn’t a real attic, either. She found a small hatch in the ceiling of the bedroom and got up into it with a footstool from the kitchen. Twenty minutes convinced her there was nothing but old clothes and Christmas decorations up there.

Madelyn checked her watches. She’d spent an hour biking into the Valley, and another hour searching the house so far. According to watch number two, sundown was in ninety-three minutes. And Max’s deadline was in four hours.

There was a small shed in the backyard, one of the ones that looked like a big Tupperware container, but it was nothing but garden tools and a lawn mower. She even tipped over a few bags of potting soil and fertilizer to make sure the box wasn’t hidden behind them. Nothing in the tight gap between the shed and the backyard fence, either.

Even though the garage was connected to the cottage, it didn’t have a connecting door. She tugged on the big door but it was locked. Or maybe the motor was holding it shut. She walked around the garage and found a side door opposite the cottage. It was also locked.

A quick trip back inside let her find the basket by the door. It had a very overdue parking ticket, some loose change, two key rings, and a small remote with a single button on it. Madelyn squeezed the remote a few times before she remembered the power had been off for a few years at this point.

Back outside she started testing the key ring against the door. Hector’s grandfather had shuffled down the driveway and found a friend. A tall ex with a plaid shirt and a limp. They’d bumped shoulders and were turning together in a creepy slow dance. They didn’t notice her or the sound of jingling keys.

And how is that, she wondered. There was a certain logic to them filtering her out, but shouldn’t they see and hear other things she had contact with? Were the exes seeing an empty suit of clothes walking around, or a set of keys floating in the air, or did the filter have range?

The first key she tried on the second ring fit the door. She glanced at her watches again. Fifteen minutes trying to get into the garage. If she didn’t find the box soon, it’d be dark by the time she got back to the Mount. She pushed the door open.

The garage was a lot like hers back home, an example of controlled chaos. A huge Lincoln filled most of the space. There was a trio of bikes parked—stacked, really—against the back wall. Metal shelves held some canned food, jars of nails and screws, a plastic toolbox, and a few more paperback books. It looked like Piers Anthony and Alan Dean Foster had been banished from the loft. An upright piano stood under a drop cloth and some empty flowerpots. An old painting—a guy with a mustache and a sash—hung on one wall next to a pair of rakes and a folding ladder.

Madelyn pulled everything off the piano and opened the lid. She pressed her hands against the Lincoln’s windows and looked in the backseat. She got down on all fours and looked under the car. It wasn’t until she climbed back to her feet that she bothered to look up.

Just like her own mom and dad, Hector’s grandfather had saved space by putting stuff up in the garage’s rafters. He’d even wrestled a sheet of plywood up there to use as a huge shelf. She could see suitcases, old boxes, and what looked like a big stuffed bear.

Stretched between two of the beams, right over the big door, was something wrapped in a black trash bag. It was about three feet long.

It took her a minute to get the ladder off the wall, and another two to get it in front of the Lincoln. As she was trying to set it down, one of the legs swung up and broke the Lincoln’s tail light. Nobody would ever know, but she still felt bad. She kicked out the ladder’s legs and climbed up to the top. It wobbled a little, but she’d never been scared of heights.

A few tugs and the plastic bag came loose. The box was dark wood, just like Hector had said, with narrow iron hinges. It looked old. She slid one side free and let the whole thing settle into her arms. It took a moment to get her balance and then she worked her way back down the ladder without using her hands.

The box reminded her of a coffin, even though she’d only been to one funeral in her whole life. There was a crest engraved in the lid with a few words in Spanish—she’d studied French in school. There was a latch made from the same black iron as the hinges. The padlock on the latch, however, was steel and new.

Madelyn looked around the garage for a minute and found the plastic toolbox. There was a flathead screwdriver right on the top tray and a hammer underneath that. She pushed the screwdriver through the padlock’s hasp and whacked it with the hammer. The screwdriver slipped loose and spun across the garage. She chased after it, repositioned, and pounded a few more times. The padlock didn’t budge, but the latch tore free from the wood. It made her pause for a moment, then she beat on the screwdriver a few more times until the box cracked and the latch ripped away.

She heard a thump behind her and spun around. Grandfather de la Vega and the other ex were pressed against the garage door, their heads framed in the large windows. Well, the top of grandfather’s head. The wood muffled their clicking jaws. Another ex, a skinny woman in a dress, stumbled up the driveway behind them.

Less than an hour until sundown. She needed to get moving. She threw open the box and tossed aside an old black sheet that had been folded over the contents. And there was the sword.

After seeing the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie she’d convinced her parents to let her take fencing lessons. It’d been a huge letdown. Junior-level fencing wasn’t as action-packed as the movies made it out to be, and competition-legal foils just didn’t measure up to the gorgeous sword Orlando Bloom had made for Commodore Norrington or the one Inigo Montoya’s father had made for the six-fingered man.

This sword did, though. She didn’t know anything about weapons but she could tell this was a piece of art. There weren’t any fancy jewels or gold or anything, but it was still beautiful. The blade was thin and covered with hundreds of curls and scrolls that reminded her of her dad’s paisley ties. Above the handle—the hilt, she remembered—was a circle of metal, curved down to guard the hand. It was cut and engraved to look like an elaborate flower. A thick rod of metal stretched side to side beneath the circle, and a matching one curved down to make the knuckle guard.