Malorie(15)

She thinks of Sam and Mary Walsh rotting, too.

She reaches the fortress, shin first, banging against something hard. If Ron’s alive inside, he’s heard her. But she knocks on a wall of wood all the same.

“Malorie?”

It’s been three years and she’s still the last person he’s seen. She knows this now.

“Yes, Ron. It’s me.”

The desperation in her voice frightens her. Did she make sure Tom and Olympia were safe and secure in Cabin Three? Did she hurry out too fast?

A series of clicks tell her that Ron is doing the equivalent of what was once simply called unlocking doors. Now it sounds more like he’s moving a thousand small objects out of the way.

She hears close creaking. What feels like dark air accosts her. Stuffy. Sour. The scent of an unwashed man opening the door to his windowless home.

“Malorie!”

He sounds excited but tired. Even the one word has the aristocratic lilt Malorie encountered ten years ago. She knows that Ron is what people in the old world would have called “too smart for his own good.”

“Hi, Ron,” she says. “You got a minute?”

Ron laughs. Because it’s funny. Because all he has is minutes, alone in his bunker of blindness.

“I was expecting a cadre of friends and family, but they seem to be running late,” he says. “We’ve just enough time for crumpets.”

Malorie wants to smile. She wants to make anxious jokes about the horrors like Ron Handy does. But her parents’ names are circling through her head like vultures, waiting for the hope to die.

“Something bothering you?” Ron asks. “Something with the kids? Who, might I add, are not kids any longer?”

“Did someone come by here, Ron? A man saying he was from the census?”

She can’t see his face, but she knows this question will scare him. The mere mention of an outsider claiming to be anything is enough to send Ron Handy back inside without a word.

But he remains. And when he speaks, Malorie can hear the effort of doing so in his voice.

“No. Unless I was asleep. Or perhaps so far gone into my own head that I mistook his knocking for a thought.” But the joke falls flat between them. Then, “Why not come inside? I don’t much like the exterior world these days.”

Blind, impatient, shell-shocked, Malorie steps inside. She waits as he slides everything back in place by the door.

“I used to live in the office,” Ron says. “But there’s a particular window in there that I do not like. I’ve covered it two dozen times over, but I just…do not like it.”

He touches her hand, and Malorie almost cries out.

“So I moved. Now I live where they once kept the supplies. Filters and rotors. Cans of oil. Can’t say I haven’t considered drinking one.”

“Ron…”

“Well, what? I don’t wear the new world very well. And I’m okay with that.”

He tugs on her hand, leading her deeper into his home. The moving is easier than she remembers, less junk in the way, and she understands that even a man who lives like this must make home improvements over time.

But the smell is as bad as it’s ever been. Gasoline and sweat. Piss and possibly more.

She follows him through what could be a proper hallway but is probably only a path through stacks of clutter.

“Here,” he says at last.

Malorie thinks of her parents.

Impossible.

“A drink?” Ron asks. “I have a little whiskey left. And I haven’t found cause enough to down it.”

“No,” Malorie says. “But thank you.”

“Well, at least take a seat. Would you believe I keep two chairs? It’s probably a bad idea. There are times I believe I’m not alone.”

He makes to take Malorie’s other hand and feels the stack of papers instead.

“What’s this?” he asks, heavy suspicion in his voice.

“The man from the census left these on our porch. It’s why I’m here.”

She expects Ron to ask her to leave. But he only takes her other hand and guides her to a wooden stool.

Malorie sits but it’s not easy to stay still.

“Do you know anything about a train, Ron?”

Suddenly it strikes her how insane this is. How desperate she is for another opinion. Ron Handy hasn’t left this space in years.

“The Blind Train,” Ron says. “I’ve heard of it.”

Malorie’s voice comes out quicker than planned.

“What do you know?”

“First I’ll introduce to you the medium by which I heard of it,” he says. “But I warn you…what I’m about to play frightens me deeply. And I won’t listen to it for very long. If the sight of them drives us mad…what might the sound of them do?”

Malorie rubs her gloved hands along the long sleeves she wears. She thinks of redheaded Annette running mad with a knife through the school for the blind.

A radio squawks. Malorie recoils. Before she speaks, she hears a distant voice. A man says, “…I used to enjoy that very much!”

Then the radio goes silent again.

“So, you see,” Ron says, “not as cut off as I seem to be. It was upon those very waves that I heard mention of a train. I can only assume your question has something to do with that stack of papers I felt in your hand.”