Page 55 of The End of the World As We Know It

Baker clicked off the TV. He craved a drink, but that required a trip to the kitchen. He’d kill for a bag of Orville Redenbacher. Goddammit, this washishouse. He needed that animal gone. He shoved out of his chair and stormed down the hall.

But halted at the coatrack. The dik-dik was curled in a brown ball in the center of the kitchen, asleep.

He took a moment to examine her auburn pelt. Where there was fur, it was glossy with black and white pinstripes, but there were bare patches, too, valleys of pink skin. Like scourge marks.

Baker heaved a sigh. Scratched his ass and contemplated. If the animal wouldn’t leave willingly, he’d have to flush her out.

He trooped up to his bedroom and raided his stash of Nutter Butter cookies. Returning, he opened the front door, scattered some on the porch, and sprinkled a trail all the way to the kitchen. Then, his eyes never leaving the dik-dik, he righted the coatrack and flicked some cookie crumbs at her.

The animal jarred and clambered up, but she paid no mind to the crumbs.

“Eat,” he commanded.

She didn’t move.

“You’re probably thirsty,” he muttered. “Well, hold on.”

He snatched up his bourbon glass and hustled to the back bathroom. He filled the glass, stepped into the hallway, and yelped.

The dik-dik gazed up at him.

Hands trembling, he bent and deposited the glass on the floor.

“Drink,” he said.

The animal crept forward as if to comply. Then she tensed, threw a glance over her shoulder, and bounded toward him. Baker plastered himself to the wall as she scampered past. If he had a goddamn brain cell left, he’d have strapped on a dust mask before allowing her out of the kitchen.

But what had her so spooked?

He trailed after her, but faltered at the threshold of the first bedroom. His son’s.

Not really. All his son’s stuff had gone up in the fire, but Baker had reproduced it as well as he could. A quilt embroidered with the MLB team logos. A pair of trophies, one a Little League runner-up, the other a Most Improved Player award. A poster of Chubby Checker because his son had loved “The Twist.” Baker remembered the boy doing the dance in his diaper, remembered how they’d twisted together while his wife looked on and laughed.

No sound from his son’s room. The dik-dik wasn’t in there.

Baker moved on to the reproduction of his daughter’s room. An empty hamster cage. A paint-by-numbers horse Baker had fucked up royally, the eyes smudged and the mane sticking straight out like the animal had stepped on a power line. A gymnastics plaque with a blank brass plate. His daughter had loved to tumble on the mat, but she’d been too young for competitions.

The chuff of anxious breathing. He waded into the gloom and tried to ignore the dust-dank scent that haunted this shrine.

A stirring under the bed. The rasp of hooves on oak?

He crouched and screwed up his eyes, but the space was too murky. “You under there, Bambi?”

An answering scrape. Careful not to startle the little girl, he hunkered down and raised the bedspread and found a pair of chestnut eyes peering out at him. Baker was forcibly reminded of how his daughter used to select this exact spot each time they played hide-and-seek, and he couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t have to be scared of me. Why don’t you come out and—”

A creak behind him. Baker’s flesh bunched into nodes, and his bowels performed a slow roll. He pushed to his feet and spun, but the stock of his twelve-gauge was already whistling toward him. The last thing he saw before impact was the vicious sneer on Dead Ed Dedaker’s face and a flash of tombstone-white teeth.

Not for the first time, Baker dreamed of a cornfield. Of heading west. The images were fuzzy, insubstantial, but for some reason they comforted him. When he became aware of the tack-sharp pain in his temple, he wished he could remain unconscious a mite longer. He cracked his eyes to slits and was greeted with a formless blur. He made to sit up, but his limbs wouldn’t cooperate. After a moment’s toil, he realized his hands and feet were bound.

That got Baker’s eyes open.

“There he is,” Dedaker said.

Dedaker idled in the La-Z-Boy with the dik-dik in his lap. Even from a dozen feet, Baker could see the animal quivering.

“Look, darlin’,” Dedaker said to her. “Sleeping Beauty decided to join us.”

Dedaker looked like death. His pale blue eyes were bloodshot and wreathed with crepey skin, and what flesh showed through his salt-and-pepper stubble had a sickly green undertone. His denim jacket was ill-chosen for the heat, but for all that he was still perspiring too freely. Below the rucked-up cuff of one blue-jeaned ankle, Baker spied a holster and the nose of a pistol.