Page 4 of Red Rooster

His knee got looser as he moved, and so by the time he got to the top of the basement stairs he was only puffing a little, and he forced a smile across his face when Desiree spotted him and shouted with delight.

Ashley stood at the stove and shot him a smile over her shoulder.

He definitely didn’t deserve these people, but he was glad he had them.

~*~

He woke with the phantom tastes of blood and sand in his mouth, choking on them, gasping into his pillow. He propped himself up on his good elbow and scanned what little he could of the dark room, trying to get his breath back.

The nightmares were always shapeless, an indistinct collage of light, and sound, and sensation. He woke aching all over, sore thanks to the clenching of all his ruined muscles as panic worked on him while he was defenseless. He was getting better at coming back from them. Bourbon helped.

He sat up with a groan and swung his legs over the side of the bed, wriggled his toes against the smooth, industrial carpet squares underfoot. The digital clock on his nightstand said it was just after two in the morning.

He was raking his fingers through his too-long hair, gathering the strength to stand, when he heard it: a faint tapping. Four soft raps, and then it stopped.

“What?” he asked the dark room around him.

Probably he’d just imagined it. His brain didn’t work quite right anymore. Probably–

There it was again. And it wasn’t coming from the stairs, which would have been the most logical place, but from the narrow window set just beneath the ceiling. Technically, it was a legal point of egress, one which let out onto the front yard, but you had to stand on a chair to access it. Sometimes, Ashley came down when he was out and cranked it open to let in some much-needed fresh air, but Rooster always closed it again, unable to sleep with the rumble of traffic wafting in.

It was shut tonight, and when he glanced toward it, he nearly leapt out of his skin. There was a face peering in at him, pale in the wash of the porch light, eyes huge and bright and flashing.

“Whatthe fuck?”

The tap repeated, and a small hand waved at him from the other side of the glass.

It was a girl. Staring in the window at him.

“Okay,” he said, panic washing through him in familiar waves. “Sure. Why not.”

For a moment, Rooster convinced himself that it was Desiree, that she’d snuck out of bed, somehow gotten out the front door, and…

But no, she wouldn’t do that. She was a freakishly obedient child, the kind that made single people want children of their own someday. And besides, this kid’s skin was too pale to belong to his goddaughter.

“Hello?” her voice called, muffled by the window. “Sir?”

He heaved himself upright with a groan and a crackle of protesting joints, tugged on the t-shirt that lay across the foot of his bed, and made his way to the window.

He did the maintenance work around the house – when he was mostly sober and when Ashley would let his half-crippled ass do it – so the window was well-oiled and opened easily. The girl moved back out of the way as he did so, and then popped her face into the opening. There was a cool breeze coming in off the street, bringing with it the scents of early autumn…and of a hospital: industrial strength cleaner, the harsh detergent they used to wash the sheets and gowns.

She had a cherub face, rosy-cheeked and sweet, and her hair, when the porch light hit it, sparkled like a tumble of flames. It was red. Not carrot-orange, but the deep russet of an Irish Setter, shot through with the copper of new pennies.

“What are you doing out there?” he asked, for lack of anything more intelligent to say.

Her eyes – pale green – widened. “I followed you,” she said, without beating around the bush. Her expression was guileless as a baby deer. “From the Institute.”

He stared at her a moment, stupefied. He would have loved to blame this on a bourbon hallucination, but his head was pounding and his joints were throbbing, and he knew he was sober.

“You mean…the Ingraham Institute?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why did you follow me?”

“I ran away.”

“Oh.” Like that was a normal thing to hear.