The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 6: Digging in the Dirt (Part 2 of 5)

The fine hairs on the back of Emily Kendrick's neck tingled as though her nape was brushed by static electricity.  A cold slick of imagined perspiration covered her bare arms.  She had been unconsciously swiveling back and forth, giving the OC chair a slight rock as she ate.  The movement stopped dead.  She swallowed the spoonful of yogurt in her mouth with effort.  The glassy blue eyes boring into her had turned the spoonful of yogurt in her mouth into a ball of phlegm, and she swallowed with effort.

Emily had been watching Amy.  The girl was talking to herself again.  It was the usual half mutters that were completely incomprehensible.  She sat curled up on the bed, pressed into a corner, with a blanket wrapped around her.  Her eyes stared at some blank spot on the wall.  Emily wasn't able to see Amy as anything other than a horrifying beast, and the noises she made were too freakishly reminiscent of growls and puppy mewls, so she turned the speaker volume all the way down, quieting the OC.

Then the door had opened and Emily suddenly yearned for simple companionship of the insane, bestial noises.

"Um, what are you looking at?"  Her words came out as a hoarse whisper as they escaped past the raspberry goo coating her throat.

Barbara Gracie moved from the door and slithered into the chair next to Emily, without pulling it away from the console.  She rested her hands on her lap, laying her fingers straight and perfectly parallel to her thighs.

Christ, this woman gives me the creeps.

"Tray worked for me.  You know that." 

 Emily gave a small nod of acknowledgment.  She didn't have a clue why Barbara told her that.  The way she said it made this common bit of information seem ominous, like a warning about an approaching calamity.

"I was wondering if he told you why he was leaving."

So she doesn't know.  Careful what you say, Em. 

"Why would he tell me his reasons?"

"I thought the two of you were friends?"

"What gave you that idea?"  As the evasion slipped from her mouth, she felt herself falling back into the old pattern.  She hadn't worked a con in over three years, but her training was right where she'd left it, waiting for her.

She could almost hear Lauren lecturing her, while Birdie chuckled to himself from his work table in the corner.  The musty odor from those rust-colored carpeting in their Quincy bungalow seemed to fill Emily's nostrils.  She'd almost forgotten about that crummy place they lived in when she had first joined the crew.  In a way, it had been her nursery.  She was so raw and clueless back then.

"Rule number one," Lauren said. "Is self-preservation.  Always keep yourself alive.  Nothing else is as important as that.  Not the job.  Not the team.  Not even me.  Understand?"

"So she admits it?" Birdie mumbled just loud enough to make himself heard.  Smoke rose from the ashtray at his elbow, fogging his features, as he deftly affixed a photo to a blank passport.

"Oh, do you have something to add?"  The tone was forced to arid dryness. 

Watching them always amused Emily.  There was a comforting sense of family to their teasing and nagging.  They were like an old married couple.  Even though, the thought of the two of them as a couple was disturbing on many levels. 

Lauren was a fierce fifty-year-old, who only looked forty, and had the energy of an eighteen-year-old.  She was competitive to a fault and had a sophisticated country-club beauty to her.  She was drill sergeant, mother, and rival all rolled into one.