THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

[ 046 ] true friends commit property theft together

XLVI.

t r u e   f r i e n d s
c o m m i t   p r o p e r t y
t h e f t   t o g e t h e r

—IT WAS STILL DARK as they sped down the road. The radio of Diego's car (probably stolen, Zara thought) was in poor condition. It broadcast nothing but a heaping dish of white noise and static as they chased their headlights down Highway 77.

Diego was a trooper, at least. He kept the pedal to the metal in spite of the Cadillac's increasingly distressed engine and the way the needle on the Engine Temp dial kept creeping toward 'H.' The roads were all but deserted, and they turned into 82 Olive at a quarter past five on the morning of the sixteenth.

A car was parked in front of the closed garage doors, and the lights were on downstairs, but there was no answer when they rang the doorbell. Zara went around back and hammered on the kitchen door, also to no effect. She liked it less and less.

"Well?" said Diego.

"The back is locked, too. I don't know what to do. Pick the lock, maybe?"

Diego got to work on the latch while the other two stood and watched. It went on for some time. For a crime-fighting vigilante, he really wasn't all that quick.

It was taking a long time, and so Zara looked for Five. He was hanging back on the grass lawn, hands in his pockets, staring at the Umbrella logo etched onto the building.

He looked sad. That was rather a shock to Zara, because he wasn't the type to be sad about things. Or maybe he was—but one could never tell with Five.

In that way, Zara pitied him. She had never seen him cry (though he had much to cry about) and now that she thought about it; at his most emotional, he might fetch a heavy sigh or grunt out a few chuckles. Five was the sulky silent type—the sort of person who never seemed to have emotions. Zara wasn't really much for crying or hysterics, but blocked? Unable to feel her feelings? No, she had never been those things.

She wondered for a moment if Five had ever fallen in love with someone—if he even knew how to—and then decided the thought was too stupid for words.

"You good?" she called, her voice coming a little louder than she had intended it to in the still darkness.

"Yeah, I'm okay," was his automatic response. It came so quickly she knew it was rehearsed. "It's—just . . ."

He seemed to want to say something more, but the words were bitten back.

Zara followed his gaze to the umbrella symbol next to the door. "How long has it been since you've seen the old man?" she asked.

He swallowed. "Forty-five years."

She didn't really know what to say to that. "That's a long time."

"No kidding." He sighed. "You know, when I was stuck out there—in the apocalypse—there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't hear his voice in my head."

"What was he saying?"

He didn't answer for a moment. When he did, it was like each word was being cut out of his tongue with a knife.