The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  “There’s nobody. How many rooms were occupied, do you know?”

  “No. The Vacancy sign was on, I remember that. So maybe not all of them. But…some of them. And the people from the office…” She swallowed, hard. “Maybe they got out all right.”

  And maybe they had, but there was no sign of it now. There was nothing but the two of them in the demanding sunlight and breezeless air, and finally, the far-off sound of sirens. Cal looked out across the stripped-bare fields, toward the highway.

  “I need to go find my wife.”

  3

  It probably wasn’t the first time she’d slept with a married man, but that didn’t make the news any more palatable. Abbie shrugged. “Not my business.”

  “My ex-wife,” Cal amended. “She lives between here and Ada. I should make sure she’s okay.”

  Ada was a town, not a person. She remembered that much. Cal turned without waiting for her to answer, still shading his eyes. Last night’s journey across the street was hazy, but she did remember that they’d walked. He must’ve left his vehicle in the bar parking lot, and now there was little there but buckled asphalt.

  Abbie wasn’t accustomed to the protection of a hat the way Cal probably was, but this morning’s sun was so vehemently brutal she also shaded her eyes to search for her car. A battered, dusty Volvo held together with spit and hope, it had seen her halfway across the country. It had brought her here. Once, its complicated system of airbags and seat-belts and reinforced steel had saved her life.

  She hated that car, but she loved it, too.

  She’d left it parked in front of her room, but it wasn’t there now. She found it on the other side of the lot, skewed across three parking spaces but not on its side. She ran for it, heedless of broken glass, live wires, whatever dangers were in her way. Behind her, Cal shouted, but Abbie ignored him until her hands were flat on the Volvo’s hood. The metal was hot even this early in the morning. She pressed her face to it, hugging the vehicle like a crazy woman.

  This was the car in which she’d lost everything, and it was all she had left. She didn’t care about the stuff in her demolished motel room — she could replace underpants and her toothbrush; she could buy a new pair of shoes. But this car was irreplaceable and precious for that.

  “I guess this is yours?”

  The fact he could manage to sound amused even amongst all this destruction gave her the strength to lift her head. Her cheek felt welted. Abbie found a smile. “Yeah.”

  “Don’t suppose you have the keys.”

  She held up one finger before ducking to run her hand along the back bumper. She pulled out a small black container backed with a heavy duty magnet. Inside, a key.

  She held it up, triumphant. “I do.”

  Cal shook his head, tilting it to look at her with one squinted eye. “Lose your keys a lot, do you?”

  “Have had them taken away enough times, that’s all.” She straightened, looking him in the eye. This wasn’t the time to share her personal history, but it wasn’t the time for lies either. She turned the key over and over in her fingers. It opened the trunk. She had clothes in there, she realized, some things she’d been meaning to take to the laundromat when she found one. She could really get dressed. “Give me a few minutes, okay? I want to put on something a little more…substantial.”

  In the light of day after a night of drinking and fucking, soaked from an icy shower, hair uncombed, teeth unbrushed, there was no way she should have earned the sort of appraising look he gave her now, but that’s what Cal gave her. “If you have to.”

  Abbie laughed. The short, sharp bark of it startled her at first, but then she dissolved into giggles so fierce she had to put out a hand against the car to keep herself upright. She looked up at him through the fringes of her tangled hair. Somehow, no matter what destruction had swept through here, she had the feeling everything was going to be okay.

  Too much laughter could be as bad for her as too many tears, so she held herself back. She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Then, impulsively, she pushed up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. Hard.

  “Thank you,” she told him.

  He didn’t ask her for what, and that was just fine, since she couldn’t have said what she meant. Abbie pulled open the trunk, sifted through the duffle of her dirty clothes. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, plus a sweatshirt that didn’t smell too bad. There wasn’t much she could do about panties or socks, but at least she’d be more covered up. She stripped down quickly with no more than a glance from side to side to see if anyone was there. Nobody was.

  “Christ, it’s like something out of the Twilight Zone.” She yanked the jeans up over her hips and buttoned them. The t-shirt over her head. “Like…we’re the only ones left.”

  Cal looked into the distance. “I hope not.”

  Abbie, on the other hand, kind of did. Only for a moment, though, because if they were truly the only ones left in the entire world, that would mean Ryan and the boys were gone too. And that, she thought, would be an unbearable knowledge.

  She gave Cal the key. “You drive. But I’m coming with you.”

  She thought he might balk, taking a one-nighter to visit his ex, but Cal nodded and unlocked the doors. If the interior of her car disgusted him he didn’t show it, though it was obvious he noticed the layers of fast-food wrappers and and other garbage the way he’d noticed everything else. Truth was, the trash repulsed her too.

  Maybe, she thought as Cal turned the key and the Volvo’s faithful, loyal, unfaltering engine started up with a sputter instead of a roar, she would clean out the car.

  Abbie had no idea where Ada was, but no more than five minutes after they’d left the Sentinel Motel parking lot, they had to take a detour. “At least we know we’re not the only ones who made it out okay,” she said as the uniformed cop waved them to the left from his place next to his car, lights flashing.

  Cal pulled up beside him. “Gotta get to Dogleg Lane, Eddie.”

  “Checking on Marnie?” Eddie nodded and stood straight to look past the detour. Then bent back to Cal. “Everything’s tore up that way, Cal, maybe if you had a four-wheel drive…”

  “The Volvo has all-wheel drive,” Abbie offered, not sure why she did. It made no-nevermind to her if they had to take the long way around.

  Cal glanced at her, then at Eddie. “How tore up?”

  “Trees down. A tractor trailer’s on its side. I can’t officially let you go this way, Cal…”

  Cal nodded. “Gotcha.”

  Then he pulled around the cop car and kept going. Another two miles down the rural highway, they saw where the tornado had torn through. Trees had been uprooted and tossed like toothpicks. The tractor trailer looked like a metal pretzel, on its side and blocking most of the road. Cal eased the car around it, tires crunching on the shattered contents of whatever had been in the trailer.

  Abbie looked out the window, saw the ditch. She wondered somewhat idly if they were going to make it, or if the Volvo was simply going to go two wheels deep into the mud. Would the car tip? Would it topple?

  She’d braced herself without thinking, and Cal noticed. Of course. He didn’t let go of the wheel, didn’t even glance at her. He kept his eyes on the thin sliver of road between the truck and the ditch. But he noticed.

  “C’mon, now,” he murmured to the car like it was a woman. “C’mon baby. Just a little more. A little more.”

  The car inched along, tires so close to the edge Abbie couldn’t see anything of the road when she looked out her window. She kept her eyes ahead after that.

  It would be okay. Even if he rolls this car into the ditch, we’re going so slow it will be okay. The car can take it. It made it through worse than this.

  It wasn’t until all four tires were fully on the pavement again that she realized she’d been holding her breath and gripping her fists so tight she cut her palms. Cal noticed, and he reached a hand to take hers, smearing the tiny half-moons of crimson. Fin