The Missing Read online

  Lost in his thoughts, Fenstad didn’t look up from the slate. “How did they know about the German shepherd? Did you tell them?” he asked.

  German shepherd? Meg swallowed. He held the slate loosely, like he might drop it, and she suddenly knew what he’d been about to say: I’m suffering from a nervous breakdown.

  Before she had the chance to finish that thought, the doorbell rang. Like a robot, Fenstad turned the lock. “No!” she shouted, but he didn’t heed her. He opened the door. Graham Nero’s smile was wide, and his eyes were black. Even from far away, she could see her reflection inside them.

  “May I come in?” he asked. His tone was refined, but he stood on all fours, like a wolf.

  “Holy God,” Meg whispered.

  Fenstad looked from her to Graham Nero, and whatever he was thinking, she didn’t like it. Then he did something foolish. Slate in hand, he stepped outside.

  “What do you want?” Fenstad asked.

  Graham grinned. He was drooling, and only his face was recognizable. The rest of him was pale and hairless. “She invited me here. Told me to kill that dog, too. We’re running away together.”

  Fenstad charged. Something flashed so quickly that she could hardly see it. Her mind put together the pieces and guessed what it was. The hunk of slate. He caught Graham off guard and plunged it through his chest. Graham screamed. The sound was a high-pitched, wheezing bray of pain. Fenstad wiggled the slate and forced it in further. His face was sweating. She wanted to close her eyes, but she knew she had to watch. Fenstad was grinning. His smile was wide. He pulled out the slate. Graham crawled across the lawn like a dizzy drunk. Fenstad brought the slate down again, this time in Graham’s neck. He pulled it out and brought it down again. And again. And again.

  The sound was thumping, but not wet. You’d never know. You’d never guess. Meg wanted to close her eyes but she didn’t. This was her husband. She had to watch. “Stop,” she mouthed, because she didn’t care anymore about Graham, or even about their safety. She only wanted Fenstad to stop. She only wanted that smile to go away. He was panting. Even after Graham’s face was gone, he kept stabbing, until the corpse didn’t look like a body anymore. It was a mess of gore.

  “Stop,” Meg whispered. “Stop. Please stop. Oh, God, stop.”

  Meg felt someone’s hand take her own. The hand was familiar, and automatically she squeezed. Maddie. She kept crying, even though she wanted to be strong for her daughter. She’d never been so sad in her whole life. She’d never imagined that her husband had this kind of violence inside him, or that he could commit it with such glee.

  After what seemed like hours, but was maybe only five more minutes, Fenstad stopped pounding. The slate had broken to pieces by then, and he was using his fists. His shirt and face were red with blood. When he turned toward the house Meg instinctively pushed Maddie behind her.

  He came at them. Meg flinched. He shoved her. Hard. She spun and fell to the Persian rug on the floor. Something snapped. Her ankle. The pain was so bad that she lost consciousness for a second or two. When she came to, he was standing at her feet while Maddie grabbed her arms from the other end. She pulled Meg’s body away from him and toward the stairs.

  He nodded at them both, and then went to the door. He slammed it shut and turned the deadbolt, locking them all inside.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Room 69

  Maddie pulled Meg by the arms, but with each tug Meg cried out in pain. Her ankle hurt too much. “Stop, Maddie!” she called. Maddie let go and crouched by her side.

  Fenstad pulled a bottle from his pocket and opened it. He shook a few pills into his mouth and chewed while Meg watched. “Okay,” he muttered, “okay.” Then he left the room. Meg looked up at Maddie. “Run!” she whispered, but Maddie shook her head. “No, Mom. I won’t leave you.”

  When he came back he was holding a gallon of Grey Goose vodka. He poured its contents on his hands and face, and then doused her and Maddie with the rest. “Daddy! Stop it,” Maddie cried, but Meg didn’t think he heard. Sweet Jesus, was he going to set them on fire?

  He put down the bottle and pulled a chunk of slate from his pocket. He got closer and Meg thought: This is it.

  “Go to your room, Madeline. Now!” Meg shouted.

  Maddie threw herself across Meg’s body. “No, Daddy. No! He’s dead. It’s over. No!”

  The slate dangled from Fenstad’s hand. His face was red with blood, and his green eyes blinked. “Daddy!” Maddie shouted.

  He lifted the slate and looked at Maddie for a long while. Throbbing pain coursed through the place where Maddie had lived for nine months: her womb. Run, Maddie. Run! she thought, but she didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to provoke him with the sound of her voice.

  Something changed, and his posture relaxed a little. He dropped the slate. “Alcohol probably kills it,” he said. Then he headed back into the kitchen.

  Maddie was crying softly, and Meg petted her curly hair. “Quick. Help me up the stairs, honey,” she whispered.

  Maddie nodded. Together, step by arduous step, they reached the second story. Meg didn’t just lean. Maddie practically carried her. “My room,” Meg said. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this, but it seemed as good an idea as any. “The first aid kit in the bathroom,” she said. “Second drawer, behind the towels.” Maddie started walking. Meg opened the bag she’d packed and emptied the contents of the side pocket. Earrings. A few necklaces. Diamond studs. Good thing they’d never bothered with a safety deposit box: It added up to about twenty grand. She swiped all of it into one of Fenstad’s striped tube socks. When Maddie came back with the kit she said, “Come here.”

  Maddie complied. “Are you hurt bad?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Meg said, even though she got the feeling that the bone in her foot was no longer connected to the rest of her leg. It felt heavy, like dead weight. She tugged the neck of Maddie’s T-shirt, and stuffed the jewelry-filled sock down her cotton bra. “No!” Maddie whispered. Her eyes filled with tears and she started shaking, while downstairs Fenstad began pounding the walls. What the hell was he doing?

  “Yes,” Meg said. “Tomorrow morning I want you to—oh shit, you can’t drive. Okay. I want you to ride your bike to the highway, and hitch a ride to your grandparents’ house in Wilton. I’ll stay with your father, and when he can travel we’ll join you.”

  Maddie squared her shoulders like the sock Meg had put there was plague. “I don’t want this!” she whispered. “It’s yours!”

  Meg held her by the shoulders. “You might need it to sell. Don’t worry. I don’t need any of it. Anybody stupid enough to trade a pearl for food or gas can have it.”

  Maddie was sobbing. The sobs were quiet, and hopeless. Meg lifted her chin and got very close. “You have one job, do you hear me? Say you hear me.”

  Maddie nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “I hear you,” Maddie whispered.

  “You have to stay alive, no matter what. That’s your job. No matter what happens to me or Daddy, that’s your job. You have to stay alive. Do you hear me?”

  Maddie nodded.

  “Say it,” Meg said.

  Maddie hitched her breath. “Mom,” she begged.

  “Say it,” Meg said.

  “I have to stay alive.”

  Meg kissed her forehead. “Good girl. Now make sure you’ve got everything you need. Don’t pack too much. A good coat and spare walking shoes. And don’t talk to strangers. I know how you like doing that. Even if they look nice, don’t trust them. And if they try to have sex with you, don’t be afraid to hit below the belt. That’s why they’ve got those things, so we at least have a fighting chance.” Maddie didn’t move.

  “Go on,” Meg said. “Now.”

  Maddie bent down and pressed her forehead into Meg’s chest.

  “Don’t be scared,” Meg crooned. She tried not to think about smiling Maddie all alone on a dark road full of bones. She tried not to think about the sweet,
sheltered girl who’d never been anywhere on her own except once, on a summer camp trip to Paris with a bunch of rich kids. “You’ll be fine. I know it. Now go pack.”

  Maddie sniffled. She looked like she wanted to say something, but when she saw Meg’s exhaustion, she nodded. “Okay…I love you, Mom.”

  Meg kissed the corner of her eye. “I know. Me, too. Now hurry.”

  As soon as she was gone, Meg leaned on the bed. Fenstad had rebroken her ankle. She was sweating again. The back of her shirt was wet. She closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She wasn’t sad. She hurt too much to be sad.

  That’s when she heard the scream. It was Maddie, and the sound was bloodcurdling. She hopped as fast as she could. Each slam on her good leg shook the bum one, and sent sparks through her skin like biting live cable wire. From the bureau she swiped a pair of sewing scissors, in case she needed to use them against an intruder or her husband.

  What she saw when she got down the hall confused her. Maddie was struggling on her bed, and Fenstad was holding her down. Then Meg got closer. Maddie’s wrists were tied with pillowcases to either bedpost, and Meg suddenly became so angry that she saw red.

  “For her own good,” Fenstad said.

  Meg was shaking with fury, but she tried to sound calm. “Fenstad…” she said. “You just tied your eighteen-year-old daughter to a bed.”

  His face was a blank. Worse than the coldest fish expression she’d ever seen. He almost looked dead. “If we stay here we’ll be safe…And I know her. She wants to run off and see her boyfriend.”

  He pushed past her and started down the hall. She squeezed Maddie’s foot to reassure her, and then followed him to their bedroom. “You’re out of your goddamn mind,” she said.

  He grabbed her waist. She didn’t struggle. Her ankle hurt too much for that. She let the scissors drop. Even now, she wasn’t ready to use them. He pushed her onto the bed. Her head hit the frame with a thunk. By rights, she should have fainted from the pain. But she was too pissed off. He pinned her to the mattress, and tied each hand to the bedpost using sections of their finely woven Egyptian cotton sheets. Then he secured the knots so tightly that she couldn’t make a fist.

  “Fenstad. Stop this. We have to get out of here,” she said.

  Fenstad didn’t answer. He checked the sturdiness of the knots, and then tied her right ankle to the bedpost, too. He didn’t tie her broken one, at least. She knew she should be scared, but mostly she was mad. “You jackass! Let me go!”

  He cocked his head. The blood on his face and in his hair was beginning to dry. “Room 69. I’ll bet you thought that was funny,” he said, and her heart fluttered. “You know how I found out, don’t you? I followed you. I watched.” He closed the door when he left, and everything went dark.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Cellar

  The night was howling. Danny drove down the road from Bedford, toward Corpus Christi. It was too late to leave town, and he needed to find shelter. He could hear screaming, and it wasn’t the wind. The rain was so thick that he could hardly see ten feet in front of his mom’s car, and he made sure all the doors were locked.

  He pulled in front of his house. They would try to catch him, now that he had found their lair. They were coming, he could feel them. Their smell, once you know it, was unforgettable. He was getting snot-nosed with all his crying, but he didn’t try to stop. There wasn’t anyone alive left to see.

  But then the headlights of his car shone on Fenstad Wintrob across the street. He was drilling a wooden kitchen table over the bay window in front of his house. Danny cried out in delight. No need for civility—he pulled the car onto the Wintrob lawn and cracked open the window. Driving rain flew in.

  “Hey,” he shouted. A witness! Someone else left alive.

  Fenstad turned. His face was bloody, which Danny didn’t find nearly so alarming as he might have just a week ago. He was holding several long nails between his teeth, and he pointed the drill toward the sky like an unaimed gun. He didn’t seem at all startled, or even surprised. Lightning lit up the yard for a moment, and then was gone. Animal bones were everywhere. More than on any other lawn in town. But then maybe it was because he knew Lois Larkin, and she’d marked him for something, the same way, he suddenly realized, that James had marked the Walkers.

  “You’re okay?” Danny asked.

  Fenstad shrugged. He wasn’t wearing shoes. Danny looked more closely, but the guy wasn’t sick, and he wasn’t changed. Danny could still see the whites of his eyes. “I’m leaving town tomorrow,” he called through the rain, hoping that Fenstad would spit out the nails and say, “Great. Me, too. Come on over. Hang out with my nut-job daughter and eat some homemade lasagna. I’ll adopt you. We’ll all leave together in the morning.”

  He didn’t say that. He came to the car’s open window, and smiled, like today was an ordinary day. “No thanks, kiddo,” he said. “My wife and kid are sick, so looks like I’ve got to play doctor. Maybe next time!”

  Danny looked at him for a long while until he was certain. Fenstad Wintrob was insane.

  He didn’t bother saying good-bye. He pulled the car in reverse and parked in his garage. He didn’t want to, but no other place was safe. He went inside. He locked the door behind him, even though the house was a tomb.

  He got the rest of the bullets and loaded his gun, then locked himself in his basement again, and guarded the door. There, he waited for the inevitable. He waited for the infected to come.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Quickening

  The thing formerly known as Lois Larkin stood over the hole in the floor of the Dew Drop Inn, where Ronnie and Noreen’s remains lay. She’d taught the virus something new tonight.

  Civilizations had collapsed in its presence; New Guinea, Sumer, Akkad, where the last men left had flailed themselves in hunger, and in the end eaten the bodies of the dead, and drunk water from the ocean. But it did not understand that with the death of man, her kind died, too. They had to maintain a balance. They would build strongholds on the coasts, and leave the middle of the country for the humans, like animals fatted in cages. Those who trespassed or ate more than their share would be hanged in the sunlight, and left to waste away.

  Towns across the country were falling. She could see them in her mind: New York, Boston, Austin, Sioux City, Salt Lake. She could see every thought, every final gasp, every hysterical giggle, every sunset from ten thousand eyes. Soon she would do the thing she’d dreamed about her whole life. She would leave Corpus Christi and march west. But first she would hunt down the people of this town until none were left. Until anyone who’d ever known the old Lois Larkin was dead, and even her memory ceased to exist.

  Lois pointed at Ronnie and Noreen’s bones at the bottom of the hole. “Them, too,” she said, and the infected complied, until even their scalps were gone.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Mad-e-line!

  Maddie lay in the bed Sunday night. It had been hours since her dad had put her here. At first she’d cried her eyes out, and then she’d just been scared, and now, finally, she was pissed. Bound to a bed! How was she supposed to defend herself, or her mom, or find Enrique, if she was tied to this stupid bed? Where had he gotten this idea, the porn channel?

  Most people, even her brother, David, would probably be surprised by what her dad had done, but she wasn’t. She’d always known her dad was kind of nuts.

  She didn’t yell, like she heard her mom doing (Fenstad! Come back! Let me explain! What are you DOING down there?), while down the stairs, he pounded nails into the walls. Yelling only made him nervous, and when he got nervous he got weird. Funny. After all these years, her mom had never figured that out.

  Maddie struggled. Maybe she’d break her thumbs like Houdini. She pulled hard on her left side, and tried to force her hand through the knot, but it was tight. Even if she managed to break her bones she still wouldn’t be able to wriggle her way out.

  That was when she saw his face in her window. Her dad had hammere
d shut every entrance on the ground floor, but he’d forgotten that if somebody wanted to get in, he could climb the porch and break into the bedrooms. It was dark, and all she saw were his changed black eyes. He swept his hand down the glass pane like he was trying to touch her. Her eyes welled up with tears. Enrique. He looked nothing like the boy she loved, because when he saw her, he didn’t smile.

  “Mad-e-line,” he whispered, like it was a game they were playing, and he didn’t want her parents to hear. Romeo and Juliet.

  He lifted the glass and climbed in. She wanted to scream, but she was afraid for him. She’d seen what her dad had done to Graham Nero. Or worse, if she yelled, her dad would get nervous. He’d hurt the wrong person, like her mom.

  “Mad-e-line, I missed you,” he said, but she didn’t think that was true. His brows were knotted like he was angry. He walked like a spider, graceful but ugly.

  She tried to roll from the bed, but she was trapped. “Go away,” she said. “You’re not the same.” It was true; just looking at him, she knew that the boy she loved was gone. This thing that had taken his place was an insult to his memory, and she hated it.

  “Shhh,” he said. His black eyes shone, and she saw herself inside them. Tears were falling down her cheeks like she was drowning in them, even though out here, her eyes were dry. She’d been about to scream, but now her voice was gone. It was trapped in the dark, wet place. It was trapped in his eyes.

  “Mad-e-line,” he said. She could feel him in her mind. He smiled like he loved her, but she knew it wasn’t true. Maybe it never had been. That made her sad, too.

  She tried to look away, but she couldn’t. From his eyes, there was no way out. She saw him in her bed, holding her tight. That was all he wanted. He wanted to hold her one last time. She could let him have that. She wanted it, too.

  “Stop,” she whispered. “Puh-please.” But her voice was a croak. She could hardly hear it.