35. We Have Eyes -Libby
Thirty Five
We Have Eyes -Libby
We got him inside.
Barely.
I’d pulled the car right up to the back door, blocking the entrance to offer a bit of protection.
By the time we got the door open wide enough, Finn had gone completely slack—arms hanging, head lolling.
All 200-plus pounds of trained soldier reduced to dead weight.
We half-carried, half-dragged him down the short hallway and into the back exam room, his boots catching on the floor with every step, the sound too loud in the dense quiet of the building.
“Careful—watch his shoulder,” Fiona said, her voice tight, her hands constantly repositioning to manage the wound even as they moved him.
Getting him onto the table took all three of us and a final, coordinated shove that left us breathing hard. He lay there under the thin beam of our phone flashlights.
“More light,” Fiona said. Her voice had gone flat, efficient, stripped down to its load-bearing parts, as it had been for the past hour. “I need way more than this.”
The overheads were dead, the power long gone with everything else that used to make buildings livable.
I swept my light across the reception desk on my way through and grabbed the only thing that presented itself—a small decorative candle sitting beside a stack of pamphlets about heartworm prevention that nobody would ever read again.
“I found this,” I called, my hands shaking so much the lighter took three tries.
The flame caught, steadying into a small, flickering circle that threw more shadow than light, but was enough to work in.
Fiona glanced at it. “It’ll do. Get over here.”
“The car has to be moved first,” I said. “It can’t stay there after dark.”
“Go,” she said, already turning back to Finn, already peeling away the compress with hands that had somehow stayed steady through everything. “Hurry, I’m going to need help.”
I didn’t let myself look at him again on the way out, fixing my gaze on the door, on the floor—anywhere that wasn’t the table and the shape lying on it as blood soaked through everything and kept going.
Outside, the light had dropped faster than I’d accounted for, the sky bleeding from dim gold into a gray-purple that turned the treeline into a solid dark mass and made every ordinary shape into something that required a second look.
I moved quickly, loaded my arms with the remaining gear from the back of the Suburban and put it in the clinic, then drove the Suburban deeper into the trees behind the building—angling it carefully, checking the sight line to the road twice before I was satisfied it wouldn’t stick out to anyone passing.
As I headed back to the clinic, I stopped mid-step.
That wet, low, rattling sound in the throat. Air moving through something that had stopped breathing.
It had been a man—large, broad through the shoulders, though they sat unevenly now, like the frame beneath them had snapped.
His clothes hung in shredded, stiff layers, saturated with dried blood that had stiffened the fabric in places, cracking at the folds when he moved.
The sweet, cloying scent of it reached me even at fifteen feet.
His skin had the color and texture of old wax—gray and pulled tight across the bones in some places, split open along the cheekbones.
The edges of the splits were dark and crusted, not bleeding; whatever circulated through him now moved too slowly to bother.
One side of his face had been torn, the cheek hanging loose in a flap that exposed the teeth beneath in a permanent, lipless grimace.
Its teeth were stained the dark brown of old blood, the exposed gum line shrunken back to the roots.
One eye socket sat empty, not closed, but simply hollow—a dark, wet cavity crusted at the edges with dried matter, its orbit collapsed slightly inward.
The remaining eye moved in short, disconnected jerks, tracking nothing, responding to nothing visible, swiveling in its socket with the mechanical randomness of something that had lost its signal.
His hands hung at his sides, fingers curled inward toward his palms.
Then my eyes moved to his abdomen, and I fought to hold down the bile rising in my throat.
A section of his midsection had been torn open, the edges ragged and peeled back, the cavity beneath exposed to the air.
Whatever had been inside was no longer entirely accounted for.
The remaining organs had gone the color and consistency of rot.
I couldn’t tell if something had gotten in or out, and knew I didn’t want the answer.
I stood completely motionless.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
It shifted.
One dragging step forward, the foot pulling free of the ground with an almost adhesive resistance, as if it had been standing there long enough to start bonding with the soil.
Then another, the other foot scraping along the gravel in a slow, grinding arc that set every nerve on edge.
It moved parallel to the building, tracking along the wall with no apparent destination, the trajectory carrying it closer to the door and closer to me simultaneously.
I could hear the sound in its throat with terrible clarity now—a low, continuous labor, something between a gurgle and choking.
My fingers tightened incrementally around the bag straps, taking up any slack that might allow movement or sound. My breath caught in my lungs, held tight from the moment I’d frozen.
Its head tilted.
The single working eye stopped its random movement and held a direction—not quite my direction, not quite anywhere, but close enough that a cold dread prickled at the base of my neck.
Its jaw worked slowly in that grinding, purposeless motion, teeth coming together and separating with a sound I could hear from where I stood.
Each second arrived and departed, heavy with something I had to swallow.
Then it simply turned away.
A foot dragged forward, then the other, shuffling along the side of the building.
Its uneven, listing gait was barely discernible at the edge of my perception.
It moved past the door, and the sound slowly separated from the ambient quiet of the evening until I couldn’t be certain where it was anymore.
I didn’t move, counting to ten. I forced myself through each number deliberately, not rushing, not cutting it short, even though my body had already decided we were leaving and was just waiting for my brain to catch up.
Ten.
I crossed the distance fast and quietly, the gravel somehow cooperating. I eased the door open the minimum necessary width and pulled it shut behind me with a click that seemed to hang in the air of the hallway a half-second too long.
I stood there and shook, just for a moment, just long enough to confirm I was inside and the door between me and it was locked.
“Libby?” Fiona’s voice came from down the hall, low and controlled.
“I’m okay,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I had any right to expect.
I wasn’t. It was the furthest thing from the truth.
But Finn lay on a table with a bullet in his shoulder and significant blood loss. And the cat appeared silently from somewhere in the dark hallway and pressed itself against my leg with calm, uncomplicated insistence. I looked down at it for exactly one second.
Then I picked up the bags.
I pushed away from the door and made myself move, one step and then the next, down the hallway toward the light coming from the exam room.
The clinic had somehow contracted around us—the shadows thicker than they had any right to be, the walls closer, the silence between sounds carrying more weight than silence usually did.
The cat, already at my heels, padded alongside my feet without invitation; its quiet presence the only thing in the building that seemed entirely unbothered by the situation.
When I stepped into the exam room, Finn was the first thing I saw. Still on the table, too pale, the gray quality of his skin deepened by the candlelight rather than softened by it. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm so shallow I had to concentrate to see it.
Then Fiona. Bent over his shoulder, her hands steady and her focus absolute, wearing an expression I hadn’t seen from her in all the time I’d known her—not my tenant, not his sister, not the woman who’d sat in my kitchen and drunk my coffee and talked me through things that needed talking through.
She was someone else entirely—a stranger, focused and absolute.
Lily stood at her elbow, holding the phone’s flashlight with both hands, her arm extended at the exact angle Fiona needed, her hand trembling only slightly.
“Keep it right there,” Fiona instructed, not looking up. “Exactly there.”
“I’ve got it,” Lily replied, her voice steady and quiet, stirring a pang of pride in my chest.
I stopped just inside the doorway.
“Bullet’s out,” Fiona announced before I could ask. “Checking for fragments now.”
“Okay,” I said, releasing the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“I found antibiotics,” she added, tilting her head toward a tray on the counter. “Veterinary grade, but they’ll work. And saline—I’ve already started an IV.”
“Oh, thank God,” I murmured, my voice softer than intended, hushed by the room’s quiet intensity.
Lily looked up at me then, her eyes wide.
“He didn’t even flinch,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on Finn. “The whole time… Is he supposed to be that still?”
“For now, yes,” I said, keeping my voice low for her sake. “Still is good.”
It was true. Yet, seeing him lie there motionless didn’t make it any easier. Both realities coexisted without diminishing each other.
“One more minute,” Fiona said, shifting her weight and adjusting her angle slightly. “Then I close it up.”
“I need to check the windows,” I said, my voice low. “Make sure we’re secure.”
“Go,” she replied without looking up, trusting me to handle it as she handled the task before her.