Maximilian, now transfixed, followed her without a complaint even in his mind. Curiosity, wonder, and fear tinged his thoughts now, and he even failed to consider whether the shards of wood might give him a splinter as Sarah led him on through its shattered remains.
Past the blockade, Maximilian was able to see what he never could have glimpsed from his house – a car sat hugging its headlights around a telephone pole, attempting, unsuccessfully, to become one with it. Its hood had become ruffled, allowing a steady thin line of smoke to escape. The rest of the car imitated the jagged crumple of the hood, crunching in on itself. Two white airbags filled the space in the front.
Suddenly, Maximilian gagged. He hung on to Sarah as he bent over, relieving his stomach of its daily allowance of biscotti. He knew the scent now, though he was right that he had never smelled it before. He had smelled it in animals of course, in mice stuck in the walls of his childhood house, but never in humans. Death. Death mixed with smoke and burnt rubber. Sweat and fear and inevitability. Panic.
But his feet refused to move, for all that his brain shouted at him to run away. Then, inexplicably, he felt himself drawing nearer. Perhaps it was sick curiosity that moved him, or a simple desire to find proof for the denial he begged to be allowed to make. Maximilian knew cars didn’t drive themselves – despite his inclination to reduce his interaction with the machines as much as possible – and the release of the second airbag confirmed at least one passenger. Sarah had led him here, and he wondered at what gruesome scene the child was running from, glad at least that she had been able to run.
Maximilian looked down to query her, but, doing so, found no one by his side. The street was empty but for himself, the car, and his fears, and though he swung his head about, he saw her nowhere.
His captor and leader gone, he could go home. He could walk away, shut his door, and forget what he had seen. It wouldn’t be hard. As long as he never looked outside his kitchen corner window, as long as he never found the shattered “Road Is Closed” sign with his eyes. A simple pulled shade would be enough to solve that.
A quiver shot through his nose at the thought, but it changed quickly to a wrinkle of disgust at himself. He was already out, wasn’t he? He was already here. And, he told himself, if he didn’t find Sarah’s parents for her, wherever she was hiding, she was likely to come back to his house with another knock and ten more annoyances.
Edging forward, Maximilian gasped at the scent that struck his nose, the scent emanating from the car. It was too late to turn around, for he could be sure that the putrescence had wrapped itself around him, clinging to him as surely as the fetid air he walked through. He might as well continue, so he did, stretching forward a hand and opening the driver’s side door.
Never before had he so reviled being proved right. His eyes jumped over the poor man, the driver, to find what could only be his poor wife, the passenger. Mercy found him where it had departed from these people, and he didn’t have to open the other side door to so discover the pair. It was no wonder that Sarah had come to find him, he decided, and he began to regret the voracity with which he had tried to bar her from his sanctuary. She was only a scared little girl after all, and he applauded the tears she had shed, a small number he now judged.
Then he gasped.
As he had withdrawn his eyes from the car, they had traipsed over the back seat. Laying there, neck slumped at an uncomfortable looking angle, was Sarah, one of her pigtails thrown off kilter by the tilt of her head. There could be no mistaking the blood on her shirt.
Maximilian stared at the body of the little girl, expecting her to open her eyes any second, cry and beg him to take her back to his house, a Herculean challenge he would readily undergo. But she didn’t twitch anywhere, not even her chest, which denied any ascension through the air, steady or otherwise.
Maximilian bowed his eyes, and found the teddy bear yet in his hands. Pulling it up to his eyes, he inspected it for the previous tear and snot stains that had streaked its fur but found nothing save the pristine condition he insisted that all his animals maintain. It wasn’t even damp.
He would go back and call the police from his seldom-used phone, inform them of the situation. Maximilian became very grateful that his job was that of a mere messenger, not that of the person sworn to attend the message he would bring. He did not envy them their task, particularly the dragging out of that tiny, broken body in the back seat. Maximilian turned to go back to his house.
Before he departed the gruesome scene though, he ducked into the car once more and left a large black bear sitting on the seat next to a tiny little girl named Sarah.
I really enjoyed this story. :)
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