The Girl in Red

Red saw two houses maybe a half or three quarters of a mile distant—one covered in blue siding and closer to the road, the other made of brick and tucked a little farther back. She decided she would stop in the brick one—break in, if she had to—and use it to spy on the road for a while.

She was getting that itchy feeling on the back of her neck again, and she didn’t know if it was because the patrol really was coming up behind her or if she was just being paranoid. Either way it seemed like a good time to find a hidey-hole and stay there until the patrol passed.

By the time she reached the brick house her neck was so itchy it felt like a mass of spiders were nesting on her spine. Something was wrong, really wrong, and she didn’t think it was just her worry-brain working overtime.

Something has happened to Sam and Riley, she thought as she broke one of the back windows on the house with her axe. She was hardly aware of what she was doing, because the fear had taken hold now and logic was no longer welcome.

She climbed through the window—it was low, thank goodness, because she couldn’t deal with another problem at that moment. The window was over a kitchen sink, which meant that when Red boosted herself through, her hands went into the basin and her chin banged against the faucet.

Her legs were dangling outside and she thought, It would be just my luck for them to come along and find me like this, with my limbs hanging out the window. All they would have to do is grab me and pull and there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do about it.

Red managed to turn her torso to the right and kind of flop onto the counter and yank her legs after. Something ripped as she went through and when she sat up on the counter she saw that the left leg of her pants was ripped from shin to foot. It was a good thing she had a fake leg on that side or her skin would have been ripped from shin to foot, too. She hadn’t done a great job of clearing all the glass from the bottom of the sill and had paid the price.

Tearing her pant leg was weirdly calming, because it made her settle down and focus on where she was and what she was doing.

“Stop freaking out for no reason, Red,” she said to herself.

The kids were fine. They were with D.J. She was the one who was more likely in immediate danger.

She hopped off the kitchen counter and looked around. The air was stale but it didn’t have the rotten reek of dead things decomposing. It was likely the owners had just locked up and drove away. The kitchen had yellow wallpaper with little cartoon geese in various poses—wearing a hat and reading a newspaper, or walking to the market with a basket.

Red supposed it was cute, but since in real life geese were jerks she didn’t really see the appeal of anthropomorphizing them and putting them all over your wall.

She couldn’t resist checking the cabinets and was disappointed to find nothing but a few stray cans of tuna with expired dates on them.

“How long do you have to keep tuna for it to expire?” she said, wrinkling her nose.

The kitchen connected to a dining room complete with a heavy wood dining set. It had probably been repeatedly polished by loving hands but now there were no hands to do it and a thick layer of dust had formed on the tabletop. In the center of the table was a bouquet of fake flowers composed of artificial greens and purples set in a clear blue vase. Red couldn’t even tell what flowers they were supposed to be imitating.

The dining room connected to a living room with hideously orange furniture and a carpet that looked like it was composed of lava flow—reds and oranges smashed together. There were lots of bookcases filled with glass and porcelain knickknacks but no books.

What kind of people had no books? Red judged the occupants and found them wanting.

She reckoned she wasted ten or fifteen minutes fooling around with the window and checking the kitchen cabinets. The living room had a large picture window that looked out onto the road. The angle was perfect—she could see quite a distance back the way she’d come, and if she switched corners it was easy to see another half mile or so in the other direction. After that the road rose into another rolling hill and whatever was beyond it was hidden.

The picture window had blinds and a sheer curtain and heavier curtains over those—orange, of course. While Red didn’t understand why anybody would want to spend so much time contemplating the stuff that covered the windows, she appreciated that it gave her plenty of camouflage. There was even a handy chair to sit in just at the angle she needed to watch the road.