The Fifth Day Read online

  “What happened?” Zolzaya asked Jackson.

  “Later. Lissa’s hurt. I don’t know how badly. Gary needs first aid, too, but he’ll keep. Help me get her settled.” He set her down with surprising gentleness on the sofa. “Get a blanket,” he said to Ben, who had been standing, shivering, watching them.

  He nodded mutely and went upstairs.

  For a moment, Zolzaya questioned his demanding the boy’s help—Ben was obviously still terrified to the point of being near to shutting down entirely—but she realized that Jackson had done exactly the right thing. Give him something to do, something to center him, make him forget whatever it was they had seen.

  “What’s wrong with Lissa?” Mikiko stared at her prone form with an expression somewhere between mystification and apathy.

  “We were attacked.” Jackson’s voice was curt. “Go get a wet rag.” He added, “Please,” almost as an afterthought.

  Mikiko shrugged, and went off to the kitchen, and a moment later there was the sound of water being poured from a bottle, and she returned with a wet tea towel. She handed it to Jackson, then stepped back, still watching them. Her head was tilted to one side, her plucked eyebrows arched.

  Jackson dabbed away the blood from Lissa’s cheek. She winced, moaned, pulled away. Zolzaya breathed out, only realizing then that she had been holding her breath. She had not known until that moment if Lissa was alive or dead, or injured badly enough to be comatose, a fate Zolzaya had always thought was worse than dying outright.

  “Lissa,” Jackson said, softly. “Lissa, can you hear me?”

  Lissa swallowed once, twice, then nodded. “Hurts.” Her voice was so faint it was almost inaudible.

  “I know. It hit you in the chest. You might have broken ribs. Don’t try to sit up.”

  She nodded again.

  “Can you breathe normally?”

  Another nod. “But it hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does.” Jackson looked up at Zolzaya. “I was worried about a punctured lung. I’ve seen it happen with injuries like she took. I don’t know what we could have done for her if….” He stopped, looked back down at her. “Lie back. I’m going to clean you up. Then rest. Sleep if you can. We’ll try to find meds for the pain.”

  He washed the blood from her face, and she submitted to it without flinching. Ben came back with a blanket, and they tucked it around her.

  By this time, Gary had risen. He was visibly shaking, and his left arm was crimson with blood.

  “What the fuck was that thing?” His voice was hoarse, wavering.

  “Go to the bathroom and clean your arm up. We’ll talk later. We need to make sure there’s as little chance of infection as possible. Get antibiotic salve, both for yourself and for Lissa. There’s some in the bags of stuff we got from the grocery store today. Put it on thick. One of you gets an infection, you’re screwed.”

  “I’ll get it,” Ben said. “I know where it is.”

  “Thanks, little bro,” Gary said. “I’m not sure how far my legs’ll carry me at the moment.”

  —

  A HALF HOUR later, Lissa was resting comfortably, her cheek treated and bandaged. Gary’s arm was inspected by Jackson, who pronounced his injuries ragged but superficial, and they were also salved and wrapped. The rest were arrayed on various chairs in the living room—Zolzaya in a rocking chair with Ben at her feet, Gary in a recliner, Jackson sitting next to Olivia on the loveseat. Mikiko had brought in one of the chairs from the dining room and sat on it backwards, her chin on her folded arms across the back rest, her legs splayed. Gary, despite his injury and his upset, kept giving her surreptitious glances.

  Only Jeff was absent. He had come downstairs during their chaotic return to the house to find out what the commotion was, but afterwards returned upstairs to continue his duty of giving sips of water to Margo every few minutes, and praying in between that she’d be freed from the evil spirit that had put her in this state.

  “Okay,” Zolzaya said to Jackson. “We’ve taken care of the first aid. Tell us what happened.”

  Jackson didn’t answer. His mouth tightened, and a silence fell in the room.

  “I saw it.” They were the first words Olivia had spoken since the gunshots rang out. Jackson looked over at her, and it seemed as if he was going to say something, perhaps ask her to stop, but he didn’t.

  Z had no patience left. “Saw what, Olivia?”

  Olivia’s mouth trembled, but she went on. “A monster. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know what it was. It was on the porch. Just for—for a moment. I think Jackson shot it.”

  He nodded, apparently satisfied with what she’d said. “I winged it good, that’s certain. There was blood on the porch. Not human blood.”

  “What was it?” Zolzaya asked. “Was it the thing that was stalking you?”

  “No. Something different.” He cleared his throat, looked down. His voice sounded uneasy. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen some stuff. We went in the front door of the house, you know? Not expecting anything. Everything was quiet, the house looked empty, like all the other houses. The door was unlocked, so we walked in. Lissa went first, then me, then Ben, then Gary. I was talking to Ben about where the people had kept their guns, if he knew, or if we’d have to search the house for them. Then there was a noise, and suddenly, this—this thing came charging out of a side room.”

  “Thing?”

  “It was sort of human-shaped. Bigger. Slouching, big muscles, with short, heavy legs. The arms came almost to the floor. Hands ended in long claws. Its face was—I don’t know how to describe it. Like a human, but twisted. One eye closer to the nose than the other, one corner of the mouth pulled down, the whole face off-kilter. It charged Gary, gave him those gashes. It was reaching for his throat, trying to tear it out, but he dodged in time. Damn lucky. He’d have been dead if he hadn’t reacted when he did. That thing could have ripped his windpipe out with one hand.”

  Gary looked at him, wide-eyed, and said nothing.

  “Jimmy saw it before,” Ben said in a small voice.

  “Jimmy?”

  “My best friend. He lived in the house you and Olivia are staying in. The morning before everybody disappeared, we were talking and he said he saw a monster. He drew it, and it looked just like what we saw in Mister Gray’s house.”

  “So it’s been here for a while,” Gary said. “I wonder if it’d have attacked us if we hadn’t gone into the house.”

  “No way to tell,” Jackson said. “Probably doesn’t matter one way or the other. You got balls, though, Suarez. I gotta say. I thought you were gonna turn and run. God knows a lotta guys would have. But the thing went for Ben. Kid was standing there, staring, frozen like a rabbit, not that I can blame him. It came at him with claws out. Gary ducked down, grabbed him, picked him up, and ran for the front door. That left Lissa and me. I pulled my gun, shot it. Hit it in the arm. I don’t know what the hell my problem was. It was point blank.”

  “C’mon, Jackson, cut yourself some slack,” Zolzaya began.

  “No,” Jackson said harshly. “No slack in a life-or-death situation, and my bad aim almost cost Lissa her life. It backed off, and I thought we’d wounded it badly enough that it wouldn’t try again. We retreated onto the front porch, but it came at us again. It was hurt, and furious. And strong, by god, stronger than anything I’ve ever seen. It grabbed Lissa, swung her around, and hit her square in the chest. She went right through the porch railing. I shot at it again, and this time missed completely. But it was afraid of the gun, and it backed away. I shot at it twice more, but by that time it had already disappeared inside. So I ran down the stairs to see if Lissa was okay. The rest you know.”

  Olivia shook her head, and the movement was jerky, convulsive. “No. You didn’t see. But it came back out. I saw it. It looked at you, and bared its teeth and held up its claws. Like it was going to come for you. But you got up and ran, and it watched you. It watched you all the way, with these yello
w eyes. Not human.” She lowered her gaze, and her frame shuddered with sobs. “It’s not dead. It knows where we are. It’s going to come for us.” Her crying became hysterical, desperate.

  Zolzaya expected Jackson to put his arm around her, comfort her, but he didn’t. He watched her with something like disdain, making no move to touch her or reassure her. “Look.” His voice was tight, grating. “I don’t know what that thing was any better than you do. But I do know one thing—you lose it, let your emotions run away with you, you’re going to die. We all got away with our lives by sheer dumb luck this time. There’s no reason to believe we’ll be that lucky next time.”

  Olivia pulled in her breath, held on, trying desperately to get control over herself. Her chest rose and fell convulsively, but finally she was able to let the air out in one long stream.

  Jackson looked away from her. Now that she’d obeyed his instructions, she was set aside.

  “What….” Gary paused. Everyone turned to look at him. Mikiko, who had been staring into space, perked up, lifted her head from her arms, and arched an eyebrow, her bright pink lips parting in a quizzical smile.

  “Yes?” Jackson said. The word sounded like a warning.

  Say what’s on your mind, but don’t you dare contradict me, soldier.

  “I’m not going to say I wasn’t scared, in that house. But Jesus, Jackson, you can’t sit there and say that we gotta act like this is some kind of battle situation. Protect your buddies, listen to your commanding officer, you know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—I don’t know, this can’t be real. It’s not real things. It can’t be. These are like, fuck—” His voice cracked, and he looked down, tears sliding down his cheeks. “They’re monsters, like Olivia said. Out of a kid’s nightmare. Out of a horror movie, you know? How many more of them are out there? Okay, you’re right, we were lucky. We got away. But Olivia saw that thing watching us as we ran. She’s right. It knows we’re in here. What’s to stop it from breaking the door in and making us into meatloaf?”

  Jackson looked at him impassively for a moment, and didn’t answer. Then he turned back to the others. “The priority is getting to a clinic or a pharmacy, or preferably both. We need medicines. A couple of tubes of antibiotic salve aren’t going to last us. We should see if we can find out the name of a good broad-spectrum antibiotic, and raid their stockroom. We need an IV for Margo and painkillers for Lissa.” He scanned the faces of the others, fixing them each with a cold eye. “Who is going to come with me? I have no idea how long this is going to take, and I’d rather we don’t risk being caught out after dark.”

  “Fuck, man,” Gary said, “don’t you feel anything?”

  “Not if it gets in the way.”

  “You didn’t answer his question, Jackson,” Zolzaya said. “What are these things? They certainly weren’t there before. Whatever it was that made most of the human race disappear also seems to have released the monsters. Don’t you think it’s worth trying to figure out what they are? See if we can understand what’s going on here?”

  Jackson opened his mouth, but before he could respond, there was a weak voice from the couch.

  “Grendel,” Lissa said.

  Zolzaya looked over at the woman, who had turned her head toward them, her deep brown eyes half-lidded but still alert, intelligent. She wasn’t certain she’d heard right. “What did you say?”

  “Grendel.” Lissa slowly moved one arm up, and pointed outside. “That thing—the thing in the house. It’s Grendel.”

  Zolzaya stood, went to her side, and knelt. “You mean the monster from Beowulf? That’s what it looked like?”

  Lissa shook her head, then winced, and swallowed before she spoke again. “No. It didn’t look like it. That’s what it is.”

  Zolzaya frowned down at her. Lissa George was a scientist, and up until now had been the most skeptical and pragmatic of all of them. Had the shock and injury unseated her mind?

  “It couldn’t be….”

  One long hand came up, clutched Zolzaya’s arm. “Listen to me. What I saw… I’ve seen it before. There’s an illustrated Beowulf, my father had it in his library. He’s a lecturer at the University of Belize, teaches literature.” She paused, took a painful breath. “I used to look at it when I was a little girl. It scared me but fascinated me at the same time. And this thing—it was what was in the illustrations. Everything, right down to the asymmetry of the face, the golden eyes, the stringy hair, the talons….”

  Z squeezed her arm. “You said we can’t trust our eyes, that we conflate what we’ve seen with what we remember and what we fear….”

  Lissa once again shook her head. “I know this image well enough that I could draw it. It’s Grendel. I can’t explain it any better than you can. I don’t think it is, I know it is. That’s its name.”

  Behind Zolzaya, Jackson snorted, and there was a rustling noise as he stood. “Let me know when you women are done talking about fairy tales.” His footsteps went off into the kitchen.

  Zolzaya rolled her eyes and looked back at Lissa. “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was weak, strained with the pain of speaking. “But I haven’t told you. I saw something else. I’ve seen it twice. First time was two days ago, the day everyone disappeared. Then when we were crossing the river today, right after we left the library. Both times I saw something in the water. I didn’t want to say, because I’d told you that we had to keep our imaginations under control. But that was the moment I knew I was wrong, that I was as afraid as the rest of you.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A whirlpool.”

  “But that’s not weird.” Gary had come up behind Zolzaya soundlessly, and stood there, one hand on her shoulder, whether for her comfort or his own was impossible to tell. “Sometimes rivers have whirlpools.”

  “At the bottom of this whirlpool there were teeth.”

  Behind them, Mikiko laughed, a high, wild noise that didn’t sound sane. Zolzaya turned to look at the girl. She still straddled the chair, and was pulling on the backrest, tipping the chair onto two legs, her made-up face full of merriment. “Teeth,” was all she could get out. “Teeth.”

  “Mikiko, shut up,” Olivia hissed.

  But the girl kept laughing. In one motion, Olivia stood, crossed to her, and slapped her hard across the face. The laughing stopped as if a switch had been flipped. Her breath caught, hissing, in her throat. She bared her teeth at the other woman in an expression that was barely human.

  “Stop it!” Zolzaya gritted her teeth and moved between them. “Stop it, both of you! Jackson was right about one thing, at least. We have to stick together. Whatever these things are, wherever they’re coming from, we won’t have a chance if we start fighting among ourselves.”

  Olivia looked at her hand, then at the reddening slap-mark on Mikiko’s cheek, her mouth slack. Then her face twisted, as if she was going to cry again, but she turned and walked out of the room instead, following Jackson into the kitchen.

  “Shit,” Zolzaya said under her breath.

  8

  ARE YOU BLOCKING the path because you do not wish us to go on?

  The man laughed again. I am blocking the path because it is where I am standing. Go on if you choose. But he didn’t move; he simply stood there smiling at them, the white teeth in his dark face gleaming in the dimness, his muscular frame astride the path they needed to follow, and only darkness and trees on either side.

  And one of the travelers, bolder than the rest, said, We’ll go around you, then. And he stepped aside, off the path, and behind the tree that the man’s hand was resting on. The others watched in eagerness and fear for the bold one to reappear on the path, but a minute, then two passed, and there was no movement in the shadows that stretched out behind the man’s body, underneath the unbroken gloom that had reigned for a thousand years in the deep places in the forest.

  —

  CENTER YOURSELF. YOU’RE letting yourself be
pulled by these people. Especially the one who calls herself Zolzaya.

  Calls herself? Jackson stood, facing the window in the kitchen, eyes closed. His brow knitted for a moment, then relaxed. She’s lying?

  Yes. Watch her. She will get in the way.

  Not the black woman? She is smarter.

  She is smarter, yes, but her disbelief is her blind spot. She was nearly killed by it today. She talks louder, but is weaker. Especially now, injured, and with her world shattered around her. It will take her some time to recover, if she does. Afterwards, she might well be the stronger, but now, Zolzaya is the one you must figure into your plans.

  Will I need to kill her?

  Perhaps. But wait. There is no need for hurry.

  There isn’t? When Surt is unleashed… when Ragnarok comes. That is still far off, then? He couldn’t keep the heavy disappointment from his mental voice.

  Neither far off nor near, but in its own time. You will know when it is imminent. You will hear the trumpets announcing the end. And then the worlds of fire and the sword will be opened, as was promised to you.

  Will I survive?

  The strong will survive. The ones who listen to my voice will survive. The ones who bring Surt the sacrifice he demands, and face him fearlessly. See that you keep your wits about you.

  I will.

  There was a soft touch of a hand on Jackson’s waist, and his awareness rose not like usual, a bubble ascending slowly in still water, but bursting upwards like a startled bird. He whirled around, and grabbed the wrist, his own hand moving fast as a snake striking.

  “Ow!” Olivia said, through clenched teeth. “You’re hurting me!”