Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (read e book TXT) 📗

the schools shut down. Adam's fingers grip the top edge of the wood fence, and he pulls himself up until both elbows rest along the top. His chin hooked on his two hands, Adam says, “Did you hear about your brother's girlfriend?”

Eve shuts her eyes and says, “This sounds weird, but I really miss death . . .”

Adam kicks a leg sideways to hook his foot over the fence. He says, “Your folks emigrate yet?”

In the garage, the car's engine coughs and misses a beat on one cylinder. A ventricle getting sloppy. Inside the window glass, the garage air is shifting gray clouds of smoke. The engine misses again and goes quiet. Nothing inside moves. Eve's family, now they're just their own left-behind luggage.

And, spread out in the sunshine, feeling her skin turn tight and red, Eve says, “Poor Larry.” Still rubbing circles around her bellybutton.

Risky goes to stand next to the fence, looking up, as Adam hauls one leg, then the other over the top, then jumps down into the yard. Adam stoops to pet the dog. Scratching under the dog's chin, Adam says, “Did you tell them we're pregnant?”

And Eve, she doesn't say anything. She doesn't open her eyes.

Adam says, “If we get the whole human race started again, our folks will be so pissed . . .”

The sun is almost straight overhead. What sounds like cars is just wind blowing through the empty neighborhood.

Material possessions are obsolete. Money is useless. Status is pointless.

It would be summer for another three months, and there was a whole world of canned food to eat. That's if the Emigration Assistance Squad didn't machine-gun her for noncompliance. Top-A priority target that she is. The End.

Eve opens her eyes and looks at the white dot near the blue horizon. The Morning Star. Venus. “If I have this baby,” Eve says, “I hope it's going to be . . . Tracee.”

24

Mr. Whittier leads Miss Sneezy to the door. To the world, outside. The two of them, hand in hand. Here is our world without a devil, our Villa Diodati without any monster to blame. He's hauled the alley door open a little, open enough so a ray of real sunlight angles in from the alley. That bright slot, the opposite of the black slot we found when we arrived.

Miss Sneezy the same as Cassandra Clark, the bride of Mr. Whittier. The one he wants to save.

The projector bulb has burned out. Or burned so hot so long—with something dramatic always happening, something horrible always happening, something exciting always happening—it's tripped a circuit breaker.

The Baroness Frostbite is asleep in her pile of rags and lace, her greasy pink pucker, muttering. So is the Earl of Slander, sleep-talking, dream-rewinding the scenes in his head.

We all look to be asleep or unconscious or dreaming awake, muttering about how none of this is our fault. We're the prey. Everything here has been done to us.

Only Saint Gut-Free and Mother Nature whisper back and forth. He keeps sideways-eyeing the open door and the crack of light spilling inside. Mr. Whittier and Miss Sneezy, their dark skeletons outlined and dissolving in the glare of daylight.

The rest of us, dissolving into our costumes, into the carpet, into the floor.

Mother Nature keeps broken-record-saying, “Stop them . . . stop them . . .”

It would make a good-enough happy ending, Saint Gut-Free says. Those two young lovers walking out into the light of a bright new day. They could find help and save the group. The two of them could be victims and heroes.

But Mother Nature will only whisper, “Too early.” They need to wait just a little longer. Being younger, they can afford to wait until a few more have died.

Mother Nature and Saint Gut-Free, they could outlive old Whittier and sick Miss Sneezy.

Looking around at the rest of us, you'd bet Agent Tattletale and Chef Assassin won't last another day. The Countess Foresight, her brocade chest has stopped moving up and down, and her lips have turned blue. Even the Reverend Godless, his plucked eyebrows have stopped trying to grow back.

No, the longer they can wait, the less ways the money will have to be split.

Her brass bells ringing, the red henna vines on her hands, Mother Nature slips off one of the Saint's shoes. Her fingers touching just the pleasure centers of his sole, she holds on, her touch rolling his eyes backward in his head.

No, Mother Nature and Saint Gut-Free can have it all. All the money, she says, still touching him down there. All the glory. All the pity.

His eyes rolled up, blind, white as hard-boiled eggs, his eyelashes flutter until he jerks his foot away, Saint Gut-Free saying:

“Mnye etoh nadoh kahk zoobee v zadnetze.”

His pant legs and shirttails, they rip and stretch where they're glued to the stage with blood, and the Saint drags himself to his feet and says he's got to get out.

Not yet, says Mother Nature. Her voice a teeth-together, clenched hiss.

Saint Gut-Free takes a step and stumbles. His legs buckle, and he falls to his hands and knees. Crawling toward the open door, he says, “How can I stop them?”

And, reaching after him, Mother Nature catches her fingers hooked around his ankle and says, “Wait.”

The path where the sunlight leads them to the door, there the concrete floor feels warm. The two of them crawling, they close their eyes, blinded by the brightness, feeling their way by where the floor is warmer, Brailling with their hands and knees until they find the doorframe with the fingertips they have left. They find the sunlight with the skin of their lips and eyelids.

In the alley's narrow blue sky, birds soar back and forth. Birds and clouds that aren't cobwebs. In a blue that isn't velvet or paint.

With his head stuck out the door, Saint Gut-Free says, “I know where we're at.” Squinting, he says, “They're still here.” He points with one hand, saying, “Miss Sneezy, wait . . .”

Mother Nature's fingers holding tight to his