Читать книгу The Complete Strain Trilogy: The Strain, The Fall, The Night Eternal - Чак Хоган, Гильермо дель Торо, Guillermo Toro del - Страница 46

Flight 753 survivor Ansel Barbour huddled with his wife, Ann-Marie, and his two children, eight-year-old Benjy and five-year-old Haily, on a blue chintz sofa in the back sunroom of their three-bedroom home in Flatbush, New York. Even Pap and Gertie got into the act, the two big Saint Bernards allowed inside the house for this special occasion, so happy to see him home, their man-size paws leaning on his knees and patting gratefully at his chest.

Ansel had been seated in aisle seat 39G, in coach, returning home from an employer-paid database security training session in Potsdam, southwest of Berlin. He was a computer programmer embarking on a four-month contract with a New Jersey – based retailer following the electronic theft of millions of customers’ credit card numbers. He had never been out of the country before, and had missed his family intensely. Downtime and sightseeing tours were built into the four-day conference, but Ansel never ventured outside his hotel, preferring to remain inside his room with his laptop, talking to the kids via Webcam and playing hearts over the Internet with strangers.

His wife, Ann-Marie, was a superstitious, sheltered woman, and Flight 753’s tragic end only confirmed her closely held fears of air travel and new experiences in general. She did not drive a car. She lived in the grip of dozens of borderline obsessive-compulsive routines, including touching and repetitively cleaning every mirror in the house, which reliably warded off bad luck. Her parents had died in an automobile accident when she was four—she’d survived the crash—and she was raised by an unmarried aunt who passed away just one week before Ann-Marie and Ansel’s wedding. The births of her children had only intensified Ann-Marie’s isolation, amplifying her fears, to the point where she would often go days without leaving the safety of her own house, relying exclusively on Ansel for anything involving a transaction with the outside world.

The news of the crippled airplane had brought her to her knees. Ansel’s subsequent survival revived her with the power of an exultation that she could define only in religious terms, a deliverance confirming and consecrating the absolute necessity of her redundant, life—preserving routines.

Ansel, for his part, was intensely relieved to be back home. Both Ben and Haily tried to pile on top of him, but he had to hold them off due to the lingering pain in his neck. The tightness—his muscles felt like ropes being torturously twisted—was centralized in his throat, but extended past the hinges of his jaw up to his ears. When you twist a rope, it shortens, and that was how his muscles felt. He stretched his neck, hoping for some chiropractic relief—

SNAP … CRACKLE … POP …

—which nearly doubled him over. The pain wasn’t worth the effort.

Later, Ann-Marie walked in on him in the kitchen as he was replacing her economy-size bottle of ibuprofen in the high cabinet over the stove. He popped six at once, the daily recommended dosage—and was barely able to get them down.

Her fearful eyes drained of all cheer. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, though he was in too much discomfort to shake his head. But best not to worry her. “Just stiffness from the plane. The way my head hung, probably.”

She remained in the doorway, pulling at her fingers. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left the hospital.”

“And how would you have been able to get by?” he shot back, being shorter with her than he’d planned.

SNAP, CRACKLE, AND POP—

“But what if … what if you have to go back in? What if, this time, they want you to stay?”

It was exhausting, having to dismiss her fears at the expense of his own. “I can’t miss any work as it is. You know we’re right on the edge with our finances.”

They were a one-income household in an America of two-income households. And Ansel couldn’t take a second job, because then who would do the grocery shopping?

She said, “You know I … I couldn’t get along without you.” They never discussed her illness. At least, never in terms of it being an illness. “I need you. We need you.”

Ansel’s shoulder nod was more like a bow, dipping at his waist instead of his neck. “My God, when I think about all those people.” He pictured his seatmates from the long flight. The family with three grown children two rows in front of him. The older couple sitting across the aisle, sleeping most of the way, white-haired heads sharing the same travel pillow. The bleached-blonde flight attendant who dripped diet soda on his lap. “Why me, you know? Is there some reason I survived?”

“There is a reason,” she said, her hands flat against her chest. “Me.”

Later, Ansel took the dogs back out to their backyard shed. The yard was the main reason they’d bought this house: plenty of play room for the kids and the dogs. Ansel had Pap and Gertie before he’d ever met Ann-Marie, and she had fallen in love with them at least as much as she had him. They loved her back, no conditions. As did Ansel, and as did the kids—although Benjy, the older one, was starting to question her eccentricities here and there. Especially when they caused a conflict with an eight-year-old’s schedule of baseball practices and play dates. Already Ansel could sense Ann-Marie pulling back from him a bit. But Pap and Gertie would never challenge her, so long as she kept overfeeding them. He feared for the kids as they grew up, feared that they might outgrow their mother at too early an age, and never truly understand why she might appear to favor the dogs over them.

Inside the old garden shed, a metal fence pole was driven into the center floorboards, with two chains attached to it. Gertie had run off earlier that year, coming back with switch marks all over her back and legs, somebody having taken a whipping stick to her. So they chained up the dogs at night now, for their own protection. Ansel slowly—keeping his neck and head aligned, minimizing discomfort—set down their food and water, then ran his hand over the tufts of their enormous heads as they ate, just making them real, appreciating them for what they were at the end of this lucky day. He went out and closed the door after chaining them to the pole, and stood looking at his house from the back, trying to imagine this world without him in it. Ansel had seen his children weep today, and he had wept with them. His family needed him more than anything.

A sudden, piercing pain in his neck shook him. He grabbed for the corner of the dog shed in order to keep from falling over, and for several moments stood frozen like that, doubled over to one side, shivering and riding out this flaring, knifing pain. It passed finally, leaving him with a seashell-like roaring in one ear. He probed his neck gently with his fingers, too tender to touch. He tried to stretch it, to improve his mobility, tipping his head back as far as he could toward the night sky. Airplane lights up there, stars.

I survived, he thought. The worst is over. This soon will pass.

That night he had a horrifying dream. His children were being chased through the house by some rampaging beast, but when Ansel ran to save them, he found he had monster claws for hands. He woke up with his half of the bed soaked in sweat, and climbed out quickly—only to be gripped by another seizure of pain.

SNAP

His ears, jaw, and throat were fused together by the same taut ache, leaving him unable to swallow.

CRACKLE

The pain of that basic esophageal retraction was nearly crippling.

And then there was the thirst. Like nothing he had ever felt—an urge that would not stop.

When he could move again, he walked across the hall and into the dark kitchen. He opened the fridge and poured himself a tall glass of lemonade, then another, and another … and soon he was drinking straight from the pitcher. But nothing would quench the thirst. Why was he sweating so much?

The stains on his nightshirt had a heavy odor—vaguely musky—and the sweat had an amber tint. So hot in here …

As he placed the pitcher back in the fridge, he spotted a plate with marinating meat. He saw the sinuous strands of blood mixing lazily with oil and vinegar, and his mouth watered. Not at the prospect of grilling it, but at the idea of biting it—of sinking his teeth into it and tearing it and draining it. At the idea of drinking the blood.

POP

He wandered into the main hallway and took a peek at the kids. Benjy was balled up under Scooby-Doo sheets; Haily was snoring softly with her arm dangling off the side of her mattress, reaching for picture books that had fallen there. Seeing them allowed him to relax his shoulders and catch his breath a bit. He stepped out into the backyard to cool off, the night air chilling the dried sweat on his skin. Being home, he felt, being with his family, could cure him of anything. They would help him.

They would provide.