Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (7 page)

But I look over my shoulder as I ride away, wondering
how the accident happened and who was in the other car; if he’d wandered away or had been uninjured. Wondering if I knew the person slumped over the wheel. Had I sold magazines to him for a school fund-raiser? Had his kids ridden the bus with me? It doesn’t matter, I remind myself, pushing the pedals harder to get up the last bit of hill, working my muscles and my lungs, riding as fast as I can in the hot spring sunshine. Dead is dead.

“Keep an eye out for chickens!” I yell at Opal’s back.

She’s riding so fast, her hair flies out behind her. I pump harder, standing up on the pedals. Racing. She looks sideways at me and her mouth purses in determination. She pedals harder, trying to catch up, and I pretend I’m going full out but I hold back, letting Opal pull ahead.

In another minute, we’re laughing and shouting insults at each other to urge each other to go faster, faster, faster! I lean over the handlebars, pumping hard, loving the effort and strain of my muscles. Even the sweat. How long has it been since I rode for fun, instead of the endless slog to town, choking on exhaust and worried I’ll get pulled over by soldiers? The road here has flattened out and we coast, heading toward the back of the neighborhood and the house with the pond. All the driveways are overgrown. I imagine I can hear the frogs croaking. I think about dangling my feet in the water, how nice and cool it will be. How pretty the fish will look. I lift my hands, balancing.

Free.

“I’m gonna beat you, Velvet!” Opal shouts, looking over at me.

That’s when I see it, a blur of red. Opal, not paying attention, has veered toward the side of the road just beyond the driveway to the house with the ponds. The red thing flutters and flaps, heading right for Opal’s front tire. Hard on its heels come three dogs I recognize as part of the pack that roams the neighborhood.

“Watch out!”

Too late, for Opal and the chicken. The bike hits it dead center; the chicken gives an agonized squawk; and Opal flips headfirst over her handlebars. Shouting, I brake hard and leap off my bike, which catches me on the same calf that bore the sting of the pedal earlier. I run, limping to her. The dogs circle, growling and barking, still trying to get at the chicken fluttering slowly on the street. Without thinking, I grab up a stick from the side of the road and swing it at them.

I don’t want to hit the dogs, but I will in order to keep them from biting me or Opal. “Get out of here!”

They might’ve gone a little wild, but these dogs remember what it is like to live in a warm house with a bed and people who love them. They back off, whining. The biggest, a golden retriever with hair so filthy and matted, it’s not at all golden anymore, darts forward to grab the chicken in its mouth. It backs away, growling at me, then the other dogs inch forward to try for the prize.

I swat again, scattering them into the brush, along with the chicken. Then I turn to my sister. “Opal!”

I take her in my arms, expecting her to cry or maybe even scream, but Opal lolls, too silent. Eyes closed. Mouth open.

She’s bleeding.

“
OOOOOW!” OPAL TRIES TO WIGGLE AWAY FROM
me, but I hold her still with my free hand as I dab at the scabbing wounds on her knees. Blood trickles down her forehead, painting her cheeks in a feathery pattern.

“Sit still. I need to clean this, Opal.” We can’t afford an infection, a trip to the doctor, or the ER.

My shaking hands don’t make it any easier to work on the cuts, and my patience is gone. My baby sis can be a brat, but she’s not stupid. She sees the look on my face and settles down, wincing when I dab the wet cloth again, trying to clear away the worst of the grit and blood before I clean the wounds with the peroxide I found in the medicine cabinet.

We’re in the house with the ponds. I didn’t think about knocking the way we had at the pet lady’s house—with a limp and moaning Opal in my arms, I’d shoved the front door open and taken her upstairs to the master bathroom. That’s where my parents kept all the medical supplies, and it
was the same in this house. Fortunately, the master bath was bright from the bank of windows overlooking the backyard and the ponds, and also a skylight. I’d settled Opal on the still-fluffy bath mat while I looked for stuff to take care of her cuts, but she roused herself when I started to clean them.

I swipe at the drying blood on her cheek and focus on the slice on her forehead. It’s not too deep, but it probably could use a stitch at one end, where the gravel left a small triangular flap of skin. I do my best to smooth it into place as Opal whimpers.

“You’ll have a scar,” I say.

She brightens at this and gets to her feet to look at herself in the mirror. “Cooooooool.”

“Let me put some Band-Aids on it.” I wash my hands at the sink, using soap from a dust-covered but half-full dispenser. I dry them on the hand towel and gesture for her to face me.

It takes only another minute or so to get all of Opal’s scrapes and slices covered. She admires her reflection again, turning her face side to side, and I shake my head as I watch her. My hands have finally stopped shaking.

Behind us, a shadow flickers in the doorway.

Opal sees it, too, and we both turn. I put out an arm to keep her from leaping forward. Tense, I listen.

“Velvet …”

“Shhh.”

Something’s in the bedroom. I hear the soft, rapid
shush-shush
of breathing, the shuffle of feet on the carpet. I hold my own breath and put a hand over Opal’s mouth to keep her from saying anything else.

Connies aren’t sneaky. Most can’t speak, but that doesn’t mean they’re quiet. Connies groan and grunt and flail; they stumble and stagger and knock stuff over.

I listen, listen, listen.

Something rattles like jewelry on top of a dresser. Door hinges creak. I hear a heavy thump.

Opal’s lips move against my palm, her voice muffled. “What is it …”

I look around the bathroom for something to use as a weapon. How stupid I’ve been, going anywhere without one. It’s not like I can head into town with a golf club strapped to my back without getting into a lot of trouble, but why didn’t I think about needing something while wandering through the neighborhood?

All I can find is the handle to a mop, tucked in the corner by the toilet. It’s the kind with the removable foot you’re supposed to cover with special wet cloths. Gripping it, I step down on the foot and break it off, making the end of the handle pointy.

Opal’s staring with wide eyes as I heft the handle, then toss it back and forth from hand to hand. It’s lightweight, but metal. Once, I stabbed a Connie in the eye with a penknife. A mop handle should work, too.

I gesture for Opal to stay behind me. Instead, my sister grabs a pair of nail scissors I didn’t notice from the counter and holds them up. I’m trying to silently argue with her, but she shakes her head, her brow furrowed so hard, it bunches up the bandage. That has to hurt.

“Opal!”

Before I can stop her, she hurtles herself through the doorway, scissors raised, with a battle yell that would shame a Viking. I’m after her in a second, grabbing the back of her shirt to keep her from going too far. The fabric rips—it’s an old shirt, one she’s almost outgrown, and I’m left with nothing but a scrap of material in my fist as Opal screams and lunges toward …

A puppy.

Barking, it stands its ground, even as a puddle spreads out beneath its paws. The poor thing’s shivering and shaking, tiny teeth bared. I grab at Opal again before she can stumble forward and stab it by accident.

“Velvet, it’s a puppy!”

Earlier, my hands were shaking. Now my heart’s pounding. I taste sweat when I lick my upper lip, and my armpits are sour with it. I don’t let go of the mop handle, but I do lower it.

Opal turns to me with a wide grin. “Isn’t he cute?”

The puppy looks like a German shepherd, or a shepherd mix. It yips and manages a snarl that will be impressive in a few months but now only earns an “aww” from Opal. She
reaches for it, but the terrified puppy snaps at her fingers and backs up a step.

Opal follows, and so do I, trying again to snag her to a stop. I didn’t chase off a pack of hungry dogs just to have her end up with bitten fingers, anyway. The puppy snarls, backing up again, then begins to whine. She crouches and holds out a hand to the puppy. “Hey. Hey, little guy. Don’t be afraid.”

“Opal, don’t. He might bite you.”

“He’s just scared.” She looks at me over her shoulder. “He’s just a baby, Velvet. He’s scared and alone. Can we keep him?”

The puppy has allowed Opal to inch closer. It’s still trembling but no longer snarling. It sniffs her hand, then gives it a tentative lick. Opal looks at me with big puppy eyes herself.

I’m not sure I want to take on a pet, not with all the other responsibilities. But how can I leave this little guy behind without anyone to take care of it? I think about the pet lady’s house. The clawed cupboards. The poor, sad dead pig. This puppy will starve and die in this house alone, and if we let it outside, it’ll be destroyed by the pack. Or it’ll become part of it, and I don’t want that, either.

Opal sees me wavering. “Hooray!”

“But you have to take care of him,” I warn. “Feed him, take him out. If he makes a mess in the house, you have to clean it up—”

“Duh.” Opal looks annoyed, then turns her attention back to the pup. “C’mere, little sweetie.”

The puppy, wiggling its butt, moves closer. Opal pets it gently. It flops onto its back, legs in the air, and wiggles.

“See,” my sister says confidently, “he loves me.”

In the kitchen, we find a couple of bags of dog food in a cupboard. I look out the back door into the yard. If there are chickens, that’s where they must be. Opal’s busy petting and cooing over the puppy in her arms. She giggles when it licks her face, and she puts it down to let it run out into the backyard. We find the chicken coop, all right, but something’s worked a hole in the wire fence around it. Inside, we find nests filled with hay and the overwhelming stench of chicken poop. We find a lot of feathers. But we don’t find any chickens.

The puppy runs around and around, barking, until we go to the back side of the coop. There, huddled in the dirt in a scooped-out hollow beneath the coop, is a bedraggled red chicken. The puppy noses it, but it barely moves.

“Is it dead?” Opal asks.

I bend to look at it. The chicken eyes me, beak half open. It doesn’t move when I touch it. “No.”

“Is it hurt?”

Carefully, I lift the chicken out of its hiding place. This chicken’s been through some trouble. Cradling it against me, I try to check it for injuries and find no blood. “Maybe it’s just scared.”

“I’d be scared,” Opal says matter-of-factly, “if all my friends got eaten up.”

“Let’s see if we can find some chicken feed.”

I look around for a shed, but there isn’t one. Aside from the coop, surrounded by the wire fencing, the yard’s bare except for a raised bed that must’ve been a garden. It makes so much sense to do it that way—the soil’s so poor here, so full of rocks, that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before now. It would work so much better than trying to use clay pots barely big enough for a few herbs. There’s nothing planted in the raised bed, only dirt, but when I filter some through my fingers, it’s soft and rich. Not like the hard-packed clay we’ve been fighting to grow things in.

The house has a set of storm doors leading to a basement. The doors are locked with a chain and a padlock. I settle the chicken back into its place in the dirt and leave Opal and the puppy to guard it while I go in the house to see if I can get into the basement that way.

The basement door is also locked with a chain and padlock.

This stops me. Whatever’s in the basement must be worth protecting. So. Keys. I check the kitchen drawers and find the usual broken pens and scratch pads, garbage-bag twist ties. There’s a place for keys next to the fridge, a smooth wooden plaque with small metal hooks. But no keys.

I check inside the garage door, which is where my dad often hung his keys. Nothing. Inside the coat closet by the
front door, I check the pockets of all the coats and all the hooks. I find a purse hung behind a woman’s leather jacket. There’s money inside.

My parents
did
raise me right. I
do
hesitate before I take it, but there’s nearly a hundred dollars in small bills in the wallet, along with a handful of coins. I take it all. It might not make a difference—you can’t spend money if there’s nothing to buy. But I can’t just leave it here when we might need it someday. Besides, the people who owned this house are long gone and won’t miss it.

Checking outside through the kitchen window, I see Opal tossing a ball for the now-eager puppy, which goes after it with great galumphing leaps. The formal living room is just beyond the kitchen, and across from it, a smaller room that looks like a den or office. I can see bookshelves through the half-open door.

Books, oh, books. Without the Internet or much TV to entertain us, they’re as necessary as food, and I’m through the door without a second thought. I’m so focused on the shelves, stuffed to overflowing with paperbacks and hardcover titles, that I don’t see the man in the armchair until I almost trip over the footstool.

He’s dead.

The black plastic garbage bag hides his face, and the mottled gray and green of his hands, which are gripping the arms of the chair, are clue enough he’s long gone, though I shout out a startled “Oh, hi!” out of reflex. The smell wafts
to me next, something sickly sweet with an undertone of dirty diapers, but I don’t think he’s been dead long enough to start to fall apart.

Two dead people in a day is too many for me. I want to run screaming from the room, but instead I stare at him for a long, long moment, happy that Opal’s outside. She’s a smart kid and knows what’s up with the world these days, but I still don’t think she needs to see this, even if it’s obvious that he died by his own choice, in his favorite chair. There’s a water glass next to him, and an almost-empty bottle of liquor. A bottle of prescription pills. He’s wearing a robe and plaid pajamas too heavy for this time of year and worn slippers … it’s the slippers that get me, after a minute or so of staring at them.