Chuck stepped back a pace, gun half-leveled. “What the fuck is that?”
“It’s a wooden spider, what’s it look like?”
“Dude, that’s not helping!”
“Henry made him during the war to scout for us.” I bent down close to the table. “Hey, Mr. C. What do you have for me?” I unscrewed the lid of the salt shaker and poured the contents onto the tabletop, then smoothed the little mound into a flat patch of white granules.
Instantly the matchstick spider scurried onto the salt, leaving a trail of tiny dots behind him. It then extended one pointed foot and drew a wide, curved V in the salt, followed by a straight line connecting the top points of the V, and then two small circles inside the figure, side by side near the top. Then it stepped back and raised that leg straight out from its body, pointing northeast.
I let out a big sigh of relief.
Anne flicked the safety on her shotgun and rested it on her shoulder. “What?”
“Mr. C just told me he knows where Henry is. Which I have to say is a great load off of my mind. Especially since I’ll lay good odds that Piotr will be right there with him.”
“Of course he did.”
“See what he drew in the salt? That’s Mr. C’s symbol for Henry.”
“It looks like a face, maybe. Eyes but no mouth or nose.”
“Close, it’s a tribal mask. Where he got that from, I’ll never know. We didn’t teach it to him, he just started doing it. Had his own symbol for everyone. He can draw out simple maps and things like that as well.”
“Huh. What’s Abe’s symbol, little bug?”
Mr. C turned to an empty spot in the salt, and drew a circle, then several triangles on top and bottom, like an open-toothed maw. A prickle ran up the back of my neck. “That’s not right. My symbol was three V’s on top of each other, like a sergeant’s stripes.”
The wooden spider retraced the image, and then tapped twice next to it, firmly.
Anne looked up at me. “Not anymore.”
I picked up Mr. Careful and put him into my shirt pocket, where he curled up into a tight flat oval. Then I rubbed the images out of the salt with my finger, feeling unsettled. It sounds crazy, but having Mr. C identify me differently was like looking into a mirror and seeing somebody else staring back at you. I didn’t like it.
We left the house through the shattered front door, reminded as we stepped into the deserted street that this house, this tragic site of desperation and loss, was only one of many created by Piotr. It was warfare on a personal level, fought house to house, family member against family member, all in fearful silence.
People held hostage for months at a time with nobody around them any wiser, forced to live with a monster who looked out at you from stolen eyes. What does that say about us, that we can live next door to someone and never be close enough to see what’s going on right under our noses? When did we start hiding in our tiny worlds behind closed doors, and relying entirely on our televisions and computers for companionship? Maybe the fact that something like this could go on unnoticed for so long was more frightening than the resulting devastation.
We piled back into the truck, and I dropped Mr. C onto the dashboard, where he promptly spun to face the same direction he had indicated in the kitchen. Seeing him there brought back memories of days and nights driving with him on the painted steel dash of a jeep, legs scrabbling for purchase as we flew over ruts and road debris.
I remember Shad using his battered Ka-Bar to punch knifepoint slits into the dashboards of every vehicle we ended up in, so that the little spider could get a secure foothold. The memory brought back smells of mud, bad feet, and cordite, all mixed up with the faces of my old squad.
Patty used to ride shotgun next to me, issuing warnings with a tap on the side of his nose, with Shad, Two-Penny, and the Professor crammed in the back with the guns and gear, taking turns complaining for hours on end about my driving and keeping count of every rut and pothole I hit.
Mr. C swayed with the truck during turns, his legs rolling in time with the dash to keep his body perfectly still. Henry had to have smuggled him into town when he was captured, which was typical of Henry’s foresight. We didn’t call him the smart one for nothing.
I wanted to jam the pedal to the floor mat and follow Mr. C’s directions to where Piotr was keeping Henry, but I held steady and wove through town towards the Nail Barrel instead. The people in town needed me first. Piotr had gone to all the trouble to kidnap Henry in order to make sure that I showed up on time and was cooperative when he called, so there was no doubt in my mind that he would be safe until Piotr felt some leverage was needed.
Until then, if I could save whoever was left in this hellhole, I’d do it.