Orphan Maker Page 8

  ***

  They spent the night in the laundry room of the cabin. The air was stale and dry, with just a hint of mildew. It was a familiar odor to Gwen who had crashed in any number of abandoned homes and apartments over the years. At some point she woke to find Loomis standing at the only window in the room, pistol in hand. When Gwen moved she received a stern look, freezing her in place. Terry was oblivious, his breathing even as he slept. In the silence, Gwen heard snuffling right outside. One of the horses nickered, and whatever was outside moved away.

  “Dogs?” she mouthed in question.

  Loomis nodded, peering out the window into the night. “I think we’ll be all right,” she whispered, barely audible. “The deer population has exploded around here. They’ve learned how to hunt for themselves. They’re not hungry, just curious.”

  With no danger in evidence, Gwen’s eyes drooped shut, her body’s need for rest overcoming her desire to talk quietly with Loomis. The last thing she remembered seeing was Loomis holstering her pistol and settling back onto her sleeping bag across the door.

  Chapter Ten

  When Gwen woke again, morning light streamed into the room. The door stood open and her companions were missing, though their sleeping bags were where they had left them. She heard voices in the other room. Yawning, she stretched and unzipped her bag. She slipped on her boots, wincing from the soreness in her feet. It wasn’t as bad as the day before. That was a bonus. Her legs didn’t hurt as much either. She hardly needed to grab at the dusty washer to stand. Once she gained her balance, she stepped out of the laundry room and through the tiny bathroom to which it was attached. She found Loomis and Terry seated on the utility room floor, having breakfast. As much as the smell of food caused her belly to cramp, she had other concerns. “God, have I got to pee. Is it safe out there?” Terry giggled, though Gwen didn’t see the humor.

  Loomis found her discomfort amusing, as well. She grinned and nodded toward the door through which they had entered the cabin. “Yeah, I’ve already gone out and checked the horses. Just don’t go too far.” She tossed a handful of trail mix into her mouth, making as if to stand. “You want me to come watch out for you?”

  “No.” Gwen waved her back down. “I can pee by myself, thank you.” She sped out the door, ignoring their smirks.

  The morning air was crisp and cool, and Gwen took a deep breath. Everything looked much the same as it had the night before though dew now covered the thick foliage. She hustled across the deck and down the steps, looking for a likely bush to do her business.

  Afterward, she returned to the utility room to find Loomis smearing jam on a slice of homemade bread. Gwen’s mouth watered at the sight. She had decided the day before that one of the best things about being in Lindsay Crossing was bread. The making of it was lost in the city with no available flour or yeasts. Cara’s sourdough recipe was the first real bread she had eaten in almost five years.

  “Where’s Terry?” She sat on the floor across from Loomis. She snagged a slice of bread, slathering jam on it with a knife.

  “Looking for the owners.”

  “The owners?” Gwen’s question was muffled as she took a huge bite of her breakfast.

  “Yeah.” Loomis slid a small pail across to Gwen whose stomach gurgled in anticipation at the aroma of smoked ham. “Car’s in the driveway, not in the garage. I’m betting they didn’t go to one of the churches, and stayed here to die.”

  Gwen was unimpressed. The idea of sharing the cabin with the deceased hardly fazed her. In a city of hundreds of thousands, the dead were more obstacles than anything else, always there and always in the way. The only good thing about the passage of time had been the fading of the stench. Inside the pail, the ham was cut into neat slabs, and she fished out one. “Why bother looking?” she asked with her mouth full. “Let’s get to work on ransacking the place. We’ll find them if we find them.”

  Loomis gave her a funny look. “If they’re here, we’re going to bury them first. It’s only right since we’re on their property.”

  Choking on her food, Gwen hastily swallowed and coughed, reaching for a canteen. “You’re shitting me.” She regretted using the swear word as soon as Loomis frowned at her. Since she was already in trouble, she forged on. “You can’t bury everybody, Loomis. It just ain’t possible; there’s too many.”

  “We’re not burying everybody.” Loomis put the lid on the jam jar. “Just those we come across. Didn’t you?”

  Gwen laughed out loud. “Now you are shitting me. Do you know how many corpses there are in the city? Christ! We’d still be digging if we tried that. And where would we put them all? There ain’t that many parks.”

  Loomis didn’t share her mood. Her expression was the same as it had been the afternoon before at the summer kitchen. She didn’t say anything, but abruptly stood, her face flushed and eyes snapping. “Finish your breakfast. I’m going to help Terry.”

  Her dramatic exit was foiled when the boy jogged in from the kitchen. “Found ’em.”

  Gwen quickly finished her ham, not wanting Loomis to get in the habit of running away. It didn’t matter that her breakfast was interrupted; her stomach had shrunk considerably over the last few months, and she didn’t need to eat as much. “Where were they?”

  “Master bedroom, upstairs. There’s three of them.”

  Gwen wondered at the mournful tone of his voice until she made the connection. The baby on board.

  Terry led them through the large country kitchen, past the dining room and into the living room. The place had two fireplaces—one in the kitchen—and lots of shelves of books. Three swords hung over the living room fireplace. They didn’t look like the decorative swords at the mall. These were plain and appeared functional. Across from the front door was a set of stairs. Terry wasted no time bounding up them, his feet raising small puffs of dust from the carpet. Gwen and Loomis followed with less vigor, and Gwen rubbed irritably at her nose to keep from sneezing.

  The distant smell of decay drifted from the master bedroom, an odor long past its prime yet lingering on in the unventilated room. Sunlight lit the scene, obscenely bright and cheerful compared to the withered bodies on the large bed. There was little left but bone and hair, the woman curled into a fetal position and the man on his back. She wore a nightgown, and he only a pair of sweatpants. Gwen had learned early on to not pay attention to the dead. The survivors couldn’t do anything for them, so what was the point? They were dead, useless except to those gangs that had started bizarre death cults. Using bones and skulls and teeth for weird-ass rituals wasn’t all that shocking given the wealth of material from which to draw. Gwen had never been involved with those people, and had only heard gruesome stories. She watched Loomis stand silently over the bed of these strangers, an expression of sorrow on her face. Why? These people were nothing to her. Gwen had no doubt that Loomis would have come here to get the baby had she been personally acquainted with the parents, which meant she didn’t even know their names.

  “Rest easy,” Loomis whispered. “We’ll take care of you.”

  Gwen felt a lump in her throat. She looked back at the bodies. Superimposed over the sight was the image of her parents. She had found them much like this couple. They had been in bed, together in death, leaving her utterly alone. By then their bodies were bloated, the stink of decomposition only beginning to emanate from them. Unable to be so close to the death she had barely avoided, Gwen had fled the house never to return. Her eyes stinging, she looked back at Loomis. Deep inside, she hoped that someone like this young woman had discovered her parents, someone who hadn’t become jaded at the constant reminder of mortality, someone who remembered that life was sacred.

  “The baby’s over here.” Terry pointed.

  A crib stood near the window, dust and cobwebs covering the gay colors of the mobile that hung overhead. Loomis moved to the baby’s bed with her cousin, but Gwen remained in place, surreptitiously wiping the tears from her eyes as she forced her stupid feeli
ngs away. Obviously, she was still weak from her ordeal, or she wouldn’t be affected like this. With their attention turned elsewhere, she stepped away from the bed to check out the closet. These people had had money, by the looks of things. There had to be some kind of bling-bling around here to distract her. This is not my dog. Let Loomis deal with it.

  ***

  Loomis looked up from her work, wiping the sweat from her brow with a forearm. Terry stood nearby with the shotgun, but so far the dogs had stayed away. Maybe someone had recently given them a reminder of what their former masters had for weapons. In any case, she was relieved they hadn’t come to pester her while she buried the small family from the cabin.

  Gwen sat nearby on the rusting hulk of the car, intent on a book she had picked up from inside. Loomis didn’t know if she should be disappointed at Gwen’s apparent lack of morals, or concerned that the city kids would spread their callousness to the rest of Lindsay Crossing. Keeping the town together had cost a lot in labor and worry, not just on her part but also on those who had come forth to lead. They couldn’t afford to have the new members of their community infect everyone with insensitivity. It hadn’t been easy keeping everyone focused on the right course of action over the years. The new additions could make that job tougher.

  Terry offered her a canteen, and she took it, drinking deeply. It wasn’t quite noon, and the day was turning into another scorcher. When she finished, she capped the canteen and handed it back, returning to the task of digging. She had to admit that Gwen’s comments at breakfast made sense. When Loomis had regained her health after Orphan Maker, she and the others had traveled to McAdam for the express purpose of burying the dead. At first they concentrated on the parental remains of the survivors. Even then the task had seemed insurmountable. That was less than a fraction of one percent of what had to be in the city. Eventually, Lindsay Crossing had decided to only bury those they found in the churches and public areas, leaving the others in their homes until such time as salvage teams discovered them.

  Maybe it wasn’t that Gwen was cold-blooded about the whole thing. Her jeer about not being able to bury everybody had been based on survival. While Loomis had little personal experience with cities, she had read books and seen pictures. There really wouldn’t be much room to inter the dead, even with an army of kids to do the job, not in all that concrete and asphalt. Using the shovel to widen the four-foot deep hole, Loomis shook her head. What must it have been like for Gwen to see all that death and destruction? Sometimes Loomis forgot how many people had died, how many corpses were buried in the first year as the survivors systematically searched every house in Lindsay Crossing. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands.

  “All right.” She tossed the shovel out of the hole and scrambled up the side. “That should be deep enough.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They started at the top of the cabin and worked their way down. Loomis found the attic crawlspace in the closet of the master bedroom and boosted Terry through the small opening. Gwen rooted through the dresser and nightstand drawers, avoiding the bed and its stained mattress as much as possible. She didn’t understand what the hell her problem was. Any other day of the year, she wouldn’t have thought twice about the dead family. Now she was getting the shakes standing next to the place where they had died. It had to be Loomis’s fault, treating the corpses like humans rather than just so much trash to be ignored. What did that say about Gwen and her people that they had so easily forgot how sacred life was? She grumbled to herself and closed the dresser drawer. Overhead, she heard Terry’s muffled voice telling Loomis there was nothing there.

  Another chest of drawers sat near the now empty crib, its bright colors muted from constant exposure to sunshine and the gradual settling of dust. Gwen didn’t bother to check its contents. She already had a good idea of what she would find. The baby’s body had been tiny; no doubt it had been a newborn. Why else would its parents have had it in their room? The house was more than big enough to have a nursery.

  “Check this out.” Loomis emerged from the walk-in closet with a long dress. She carefully laid it out on the floor in a patch of sunlight. Protected from the elements by a crackling plastic bag, the dark green velour looked fresh and new. Brocade and embroidery decorated the hem and bodice. It looked like a ball gown from a medieval time.

  “Dawg, that’s diesel.” Gwen squatted down to admire the work. A smaller plastic bag was wrapped about the hanger, and she eased it open to find a pair of medallions on leather cords, and a heavily embroidered sash. “That’s got to be the bling to go with it.”

  “Look!” Terry stepped out, wearing what could only be described as a cloak. It was a rich red with a thick fur ruff along the neck. He was too short for it, the hem dragging behind him. “This is stuff from Robin Hood, right?”

  “For shizzle.” Gwen retied the small bag. “Is there more?”

  “Yeah,” Loomis said. “Four or five outfits for each of them, it looks like.”

  “You think it was for Halloween?” Terry spun around until the cloak wrapped about his feet.

  “I don’t know.” Loomis picked up the dress and brought the crackling plastic cover back down over the material. “Let’s see what else we have here.”

  As Loomis hung the dress on the back of the door, Gwen imagined her wearing it. The color would complement her complexion, and the bodice looked like it would show off a lot of cleavage. Seeing Loomis in something like that would definitely be intriguing. Dime piece would be way on tap in that!

  The only other room on this level was a loft overlooking the huge kitchen and part of the living room. The walls had cartoon characters painted on them, indicating where the nursery had been planned. In fact, Gwen saw the faded indentations of where the crib had once stood. The baby’s parents had moved it into their bedroom when they had fallen ill. Aside from another chest of drawers and a changing table, there was no other furniture here.

  Downstairs, Gwen eyed the swords hanging over the fireplace once more. If these crackers had clothes like that dress and cloak, maybe the weapons were functional. She had seen a lot of swords made for decoration. When she’d lived at the mall with Beau and his crew just after the plague, a couple of boys ran around with Japanese swords from the cutlery store. As she had told Loomis, she had some experience with knives. Swords were just bigger knives, after all.

  Curious, she stood on the hearth and pulled down the lowest sword. She was too short to reach either of the others. The sword was heavy, and she almost dropped it as she stepped down. She brushed cobwebs and dust from the scabbard and hilt. There was very little ornamentation anywhere and, when she flexed the sword, she didn’t feel the telltale wiggle in the hilt that indicated poor construction. Whoever had made this had made it to last. She slid a loop of stiff leather from its place over the hand guard and bared the blade. Despite five years of gathering dust, the sword gleamed in the sunlight, a sheen of oil still visible on the metal. Gwen gently scraped her thumb along the edge, finding it sharp, an oddity in itself. Most store-bought swords were sold dull—at least the ones at the mall. These folks had taken the time to hone the edge to razor sharpness.

  She slid the blade home and laid it on the mantel. The weapon was diesel but had nothing to do with survival. She turned away, looking for her companions. Terry was nowhere to be seen, but Loomis was at the heavily laden bookshelves. She ran her fingers along the titles, occasionally pulling a book out a few extra inches. “What are you doing?”

  “Marking which ones we’re taking with us.” Loomis’s attention remained wholly on her task. “They have a lot of historical texts.”

  “Let me guess.” Gwen peered at a title. “Robin Hood stuff?”

  Loomis grinned at her. “Yeah. That seems to be where they did a lot of their reading, though there’s a shelf of romances and some practical books on cooking and camping.” She pulled out another book, this one all the way, and showed Gwen the cover. “The Society for Creative Anachronism. I’m not
sure what it was, but there’s a mess of texts from them.”

  “The Known World Handbook,” Gwen read aloud. “Weird.” She placed it back on the shelf, and Loomis pulled it out like the others she wanted to bring home. “Where’s Terry?”

  “Poking around the kitchen.” Loomis paused in her perusal to look at her. “You want to go see what’s in the other rooms?” She nodded toward a hallway.

  “Yeah, okay. What am I looking for?”

  Loomis shrugged. “I don’t know. Just look. See if there’s anything interesting to be had.” She returned her attention to her task, already forgetting Gwen’s presence.

  There was a bathroom, stairs leading into a dark basement and two other rooms off the hallway. One of these had been converted into a home office, a heavy mahogany desk squatting ominously in the middle of the floor, a matching storage hutch looming behind. Framed photos and certificates hung from one wall, and Gwen found the law degree of Jonathan Phillips. “I was right,” she whispered aloud. “A lawyer.” Several heavy books contained legal statutes, and she bypassed them. On the desk was a picture, presumably of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. They wore some of those bizarre costumes and smiled at the camera, standing in front of what looked like a medieval campsite.

  Gwen didn’t think there’d be much of use here and drifted across the hall to the other room. This was Mrs. Phillips’s turf. It appeared she was into all that craft stuff like Heather and Cara. A worktable was covered with material, paper and sewing paraphernalia. In the corner stood a dressmaking dummy, a half- finished dusty red dress clinging to its form. There were two sewing machines here, one an antique with a foot pedal. When she opened the closet, she discovered shelves of material, lace and batting.