Chapter 4
This time around, Inkiri kept a hand on my arm to lead me along. His grip wasn’t tight, and he wasn’t hurrying, but he didn’t let go of me either.
We left the department store through the exit by the checkout counters that led back to the first floor, then took the stairs down.
I’d come in through the front myself, because the place had looked abandoned.
I’d gone up the unmoving escalator to find food and clothing, and I’d actually been on my way out when I spotted the socks.
The way Inkiri took me, we went down the stairs and rounded a corner on the first floor, and I saw signs of carnage I’d missed before.
There were gashes in the walls that looked like claw marks, and I spotted a box cutter on the floor next to a glass case with camera equipment, the cutter’s yellow handle stained with what I could tell was long-dry blood.
The glass of the display case had broken and scattered in a few places and mixed with blood—not a large puddle you got from someone bleeding out, but the smaller ones that made it look like there’d been a fight here and people had been wounded.
Or maybe people had just been running for their lives and ended up being too slow to escape entirely unscathed.
“Don’t worry. The beast upstairs was the only one,” Inkiri said. “You will be fine now.”
Well, that was probably a matter of opinion. For all I knew, I might’ve accidentally gotten hitched to the big blue dude, and it said a lot about how the past two years had gone for me that I wondered whether it would really be all that bad if that were the case.
Inkiri pulled me toward the emergency exit for shoppers.
We went through a set of heavy fire doors into a bland hallway with stairs leading up and farther down.
The fighting had been worse here. The smell of the carnage—even though it wasn’t recent—made the stale air reek, and I put a hand over my nose and mouth.
Inkiri noticed. “It’s just a short walk. You can breathe fresh air soon.”
He was right, but I still couldn’t help seeing what was here: a bigger puddle by the stairs leading down, and splatters of dark blood that had dried to black, oily sludge near the opposite wall, the one to my right.
There was a single sandal in almost the center of the hallway, the cute kind Catherine might’ve worn, with a flower pattern running along the sides. A dark brown stain marred that pattern, and I carefully walked around the sandal, pressing closer to Inkiri as I did so.
He bent his head toward me, his right horn coming frightfully close, but he just made his clicking noises, which made me think they were meant to soothe me.
Sunshine welcomed us when Inkiri pushed the outward-facing fire door open. It was May, which I knew because by some miracle, I had managed not to break my phone while trying to stay alive.
You had to get your phone charged, of course, and while power and water were still running in most places, it wasn’t a guarantee.
Being able to get to them also wasn’t guaranteed.
Either way, I had no idea what system the power was still running on here in Ireland, but I sure appreciated Irish ingenuity.
A magpie strode across the back parking lot and gave us some noticeable side-eye.
The bird’s black feathers shimmered in the sunlight, and I considered how funny it was that magpies were still doing fine while people just weren’t.
They bonded for life as far as I knew, and while they were birds, they must’ve had feelings too.
Then again, I hadn’t wished all magpies out of existence, so lucky them.
“Those are interesting creatures,” Inkiri said when he noticed me looking. “They appreciate being given food, and they seem casually friendly.”
“Huh. Does that mean you’ve come here to make friends with birds?”
“No.” Inkiri pulled something from a pocket at his belt and tossed it to the magpie, who, fearlessly, strutted right over and inspected what looked like a peanut still in the shell.
The magpie took the nut and started deshelling it right there.
“I came here because I saw the beast go into the building. I noticed because we don’t want them to get too close. We keep watch.”
“Ah.”
Maybe he was some kind of beast hunter. If so, maybe I was his prize?
Or…he seemed to like the black and white magpie, the way he kept looking at the bird even as we crossed the parking lot, which was slowly being overtaken by weeds.
Cars were still there, dead now, and rusting.
Maybe Inkiri wanted me as a pet. Magpies were smart and didn’t get too close to people so as not to get caught—I was clearly the easier catch.
For the time being, it didn’t look like I had any choice but to bide my time and just wait and see. Behind the store, there were fields bordering houses, and Inkiri led me along the overgrown path between the two.
This town was medium-sized, but sort of sprawling, with lots of nature around.
I wasn’t even sure what it was called, because I’d stopped paying attention to that kind of thing.
I usually just walked from one place to the next, because I was too scared to stay anywhere for long in case people found me.
The last time I’d run into others, it hadn’t ended well.
“Why do you sound different?” Inkiri finally asked.
“Sound different?” I looked up at him.
He inclined his head in my direction, and his horns loomed closer. “You have…an accent. It’s different from how the people here speak. Not much, but I notice.”
“Oh. I’m not from here. A bit like you. I’m from America, but now I’m stuck here. It’s not the worst place to be stuck though, you know? Less guns.”
Inkiri made his soothing clicking noises again before he said, “This world has always fascinated me, so I completely agree. I would like to explore more of it, however. Maybe you can tell me about your home, once you are rested and no longer scared. Look. We are almost there.”
He pointed at a half-finished house, almost still a building site. It didn’t look appealing, not when there were other houses nearby that had clearly been lived in. Then again, not staying where other people had lived before they just vanished sounded like a nice change of pace.
Inkiri pulled me closer as we walked through the wild yard. The earth here was torn and treacherous from heavy machinery that had been used in the early stages of construction. Weeds had started taking over here too, but they still had ways to go.
A noise from a rubble pile had me turning and stumbling on the pebbles under my feet. A magpie was cawing at us, either the same one Inkiri had fed in the parking lot or their friend.
Inkiri stopped and looked at me. “Maybe I should carry you. Donna said it’s not right to carry a person without invitation, but you can barely walk. Is it the cramp again?”
“Dude, the bird just scared me. I slipped on the rocks, and there’s no need to make a big deal out of it.” I straightened and brushed invisible dust off my shirt in an attempt to look competent at walking across stones. “Who’s Donna?”
“The other human we helped.” Inkiri was still eyeing me, unconvinced about my walking ability, as if I were a toddler.
Maybe I was, in his eyes. Who knew? It was possible toddlers of his species were better at setting one foot in front of the other than fully grown humans. “Does that mean I can carry you?”
“Oh, for the sake of—no, you can’t effing carry me.” I attempted to brush his hand off, to no avail. “It was just the bird, and the stones.” I pointed. “But I can walk.”
“But if stones are difficult—”
“No, the stones are not difficult, I’ve just had a long two years, okay? Do you want to keep discussing this, or are we meeting these other people finally? Or I could just go.”
The magpie picked that moment to caw once more, either because they wanted food or because they disagreed with the tone I was taking with Inkiri. To be totally honest, I wasn’t sure how wise it was to be talking to him like that, because swords. Three of them.
Inkiri just made the soothing clicking noises again, calmly pulled another peanut from his pocket, and tossed it to the magpie without even looking. Yeah, he was a show-off all right.
“You are confusing,” Inkiri said finally. “Donna wasn’t like this, but Donna was confusing as well. You are more confusing.”
“Thanks?”
Maybe I should ask him to take me to Donna.
Or not? This could still be a potentially very bad situation I was getting myself into here.
The fact that I had seemingly lost my ability to give any fucks didn’t change that.
I definitely, definitely shouldn’t be letting my guard down around this guy, whether he was tall and muscular and handsome and had made sure to get me my cat socks or not.
But those were cute cat socks. I couldn’t wait to wear them.
Just outside the patio door, there was a hole in the ground that looked like it had been intended to become either a pool or a pond. Now, weeds had taken it back, and another magpie was picking at something at the very bottom of it where I assumed the worms were thriving.
I felt Inkiri’s fingers tighten on my arm when I looked at the pool hole, almost as if he was worried I’d accidentally wander over there and fall in, crack my head open at the bottom, and die horribly.
It made me wonder whether I was actually giving the impression that I was that incompetent at living.
The house itself was large. Construction had progressed to the point that it had doors and windows, so we entered through a sliding glass door in the back.
I blinked a few times, because the inside wasn’t what I’d expected. As with any building site, there was still machinery and tools around, and I saw one of those big long workbenches to the left where the rest of the machinery had been gathered.