The Way It Ends

by Marnie Vinge

  Vanessa stands, her eyes dazed by what has just happened.

  She cups a hand around her mouth. She gasps. The sound is a squeak in the darkness. It could be a mouse if Birdie didn’t see the woman standing in front of her.

  Birdie grits her teeth, bearing down with the contraction.

  “It’s happening,” she says between breaths to Ione.

  Ione clutches her hand, allowing Birdie to squeeze with everything she has. She hears her friend’s knuckles crack, another sound in the darkness. The crunching of bones brings Birdie back to the moment. The room seems to stop melting as the contraction abates.

  Everything comes back into focus long enough for her to hear Ione.

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” Ione says.

  “There’s no time,” Birdie replies.

  Ione turns to Vanessa. The woman stands, hand still covering her mouth, over the form of her husband.

  “Vanessa!” she calls to her.

  Vanessa doesn’t move. Her chest begins to heave, up and down, faster and faster. She’s hyperventilating.

  “Vanessa!” Ione shouts this time.

  Vanessa looks at her. Her eyes are wild, mirroring the way her husband’s eyes looked only a few moments ago.

  “I need your help,” Ione says.

  Vanessa’s eyes tear up. She looks at the pair of them. Birdie breathes quickly, trying to keep the pain at bay.

  She steps forward, approaching the pair of them. She steps over Tom’s legs as she moves toward them. Tom moves slightly, he makes a noise that sounds like it might be his last. Birdie clenches her jaw again as another contraction seizes her.

  “I need you to help her,” Ione repeats to Vanessa.

  Vanessa swallows. She tries to catch her breath.

  “I can’t,” she says between breaths.

  “You have to,” Ione says, releasing Birdie’s hand and grabbing Vanessa’s face, placing it between her palms.

  Vanessa’s eyes dart between both of Ione’s, searching for something, Birdie thinks. The woman is terrified. Birdie’s never seen her like this. The thought creeps up on her like an assailant in a dark parking lot. She doesn’t have her keys between her knuckles at the ready to defend herself.

  She grits her teeth and feels the grind of her molars—hears the squeak of bone on bone—and flicks her tongue to the back of her mouth, feeling a piece chip off in the process. She probes the new ridge of her tooth, losing herself in the action.

  “Vanessa!” Ione shouts.

  Vanessa nods frantically. She reaches back and grabs the knife that sticks out of Tom’s back. He screams as she yanks it free. She gets between Birdie’s legs. She slices through her underwear and helps Birdie to spread her thighs apart.

  “Relax your legs,” Vanessa says.

  Birdie barks a bitter laugh. It sounds like something she’s heard before at the gynecologist’s office. An instruction that was always laughable. How is a woman supposed to relax with her legs spread, the object of most men’s desire and hatred exposed for a stranger to examine?

  “I know it’s hard,” Vanessa says. She sniffs, trying to stop the tears. She places her hands on Birdie’s knees, guiding them apart. Birdie fights it at first as a contraction comes on. She screams, no longer afraid of anyone hearing her.

  She lets her legs relax as best she can, her muscles still taut and straining to handle the pain that her body is being dealt.

  “Breathe,” Ione says. She returns to Birdie’s side and takes her hand.

  Birdie looks at her friend and then back at Vanessa. It occurs to her how strange it is to trust someone who held a bloody rag against her lips only a day before. But her options are limited. She’s the only one who knows how to get her through this.

  Vanessa speaks.

  “Look at me,” she says, the normal timbre of her voice returning. She regains her composure and the control that she usually effortlessly exerts over every situation. She’s shaken, Birdie realizes. Tom is dying. She looks at him, a heap on the floor, the blood from his back still pooling beside him. She wonders how deeply the knife sunk in. If it cut his spinal cord. If he’s paralyzed. The thoughts are too much to contemplate now. She can only focus on the baby.

  “Breathe,” Vanessa instructs. “And when you feel the next contraction, push.”

  Birdie nods silently. She breathes steadily, finding a rhythm in the pain—a purpose. She has to get through this. She hasn’t survived this long, scrapped her way to the top, to die here. She nods more vigorously.

  She breathes in, then out. Inhales. Exhales. Again, and again. Then the contraction comes.

  “Push!” Vanessa shouts.

  “You can do it, Birdie,” Ione says, close to her ear.

  Birdie pushes with everything she’s got. The pain intensifies. She cries out into the darkness. As it comes to a close, she relaxes as best she can once more.

  “Good! Good!” Vanessa says.

  Unsure of how much time passes, Birdie goes through the process again and again until finally Vanessa shrieks.

  “It’s crowning,” she says. “Push hard!”

  Birdie follows the instructions, bearing down on the contraction with everything she’s got. She feels her thighs slick with the fluids of birth and perhaps blood, too. She can feel the baby coming. It’s almost here.

  She doesn’t have time to consider it long, but the thought occurs to her that this is the last moment in her life when it will just be her. From this point forward, she’s responsible for another human being. Another heartbeat is depending on her to keep it going. The thought is overwhelmed by another contraction.

  She pushes.

  And the baby is born.

  Ione laughs and Birdie looks at her. Tears snake down her cheeks, pale trails in the moonlight.

  “Oh my God,” Ione says, turning from her friend to Vanessa.

  Birdie looks up as the baby begins to cry.

  And that’s when the three of them hear the explosion.

  IONE

  The baby screams just as an explosion rocks the walls of the little studio. I turn, Birdie’s hand still in mine. She gasps for air, catching her breath, readying herself the next part of the process. It’s not over yet, I know that. I turn back to Birdie.

  “You’ve got this, girl,” I say with a smile.

  Though she’s not out of the woods, I feel optimistic now. I know there’s the possibility that she could bleed to death passing the placenta. I heard a story about a girl that almost died from that when I was in high school. It was something of an urban legend. She’d given birth to the baby in a bathroom after concealing the entirety of her pregnancy from friends, family, and teachers.

  At least the baby is crying, I think.

  Birdie seems to relax as the final contraction before the child was born begins to pass. It’s like a wave of calm descends on her. She looks at me. Her eyes are clear like the sky over the ocean after a storm.

  “You’re a mom,” I laugh.

  She laughs back. There’s a hesitancy there. I wonder how she feels about it. In any other situation, I’d ask. We had that kind of relationship. But now is not the time or the place. There aren’t enough spare moments for emotions now. It’s up to Vanessa and me to get her and the child out of here to safety.

  I look to Vanessa, hoping that she’s got instructions on what to do next. What we should expect. Instead, she’s looking at the baby. There’s an intensity in her gaze that unsettles me. It dawns on me that the woman just confronted her husband about a miscarriage and now she’s holding a child that he created with another person. I loosen my grip on Birdie’s hand.

  For the first time since I rose up from the floor, I look over at Tom.

  Glassy eyes stare into the distance, seeing only what the dead can see. He’s gone. His spinal cord severed and too much blood lost for recovery. That look in his eyes, I’ve seen it before. It’s the same look my father had in his eyes after he passed. Like he can see something that the res
t of us can’t.

  Something compels me to go to him.

  I stand, releasing Birdie’s hand and walking past Vanessa and the baby. I kneel beside Tom and brush a wave of hair away from his face. His mouth is slack, opened in an unsaid remark, which seems fitting. The last word was always his.

  I’m struck by the emotion that overwhelms me, and I’m ashamed of it.

  Relief.

  I stare down at him, at those doll’s eyes that look into the abyss, and I wonder how he ever thought this could end. I wonder what he had hoped for this place. And there’s a part of me that hates him for not including me in his mad vision.

  This place is madness. Tom was madness personified. I loved him more fiercely than I ever loved Wes. I realize that. But Wes was safe, and I shunned the safety he offered. I wanted the fire. I wanted to burn the world to the ground with Tom at my side holding the kerosene.

  I stand and my knees pop.

  I turn back to Birdie and Vanessa.

  “She has to pass the placenta,” Vanessa murmurs, holding the child.

  I nod at Birdie, who nods back to me. I kneel again, taking her hand.

  Another contraction seizes her. She screams as she pushes. I’ve heard this part is harder than the actual labor, or at least that it hurts worse. I let her bear down on my palm, cracking my knuckles once more.

  Birdie pushes hard, her focus so intense that I can see little crescent moons forming on the back of my hand where her nails dig in. I glance back at Tom once more, lying in a pool of his own blood. I look back at Birdie, sitting it a pool of hers.

  The baby quiets. Vanessa strips the shirt from her body and wraps the child in it.

  “She needs attention. Now,” Vanessa says.

  The way she says it implies urgency. I nod to her.

  “Stay here,” I say. “I’m going to get help.”

  Birdie nods her head emphatically, ready to get out of here. I stand and look once more at the four of them: Vanessa, Birdie, the baby, and Tom.

  I duck out of the studio into the night. I hear another explosion, this time loud enough that I cover my ears. The night sky is an inky backdrop for the orange flames that lick at it. The entire compound is on fire and it’s slowly encroaching on the studio.

  I look towards the road and see that the armored vehicles have advanced. Gunfire rings out, loud pops and crackles in the night. They have no idea that the person they’re seeking is already dead.

  I run into the trees, hoping to avoid a bullet. The branches scrape and claw at my clothes, tearing them in places, I’m sure. I don’t have time to check.

  I emerge on the other side. A woman screams from somewhere deep inside the compound. The main house burns with a fury matched only by its master. I watch as orange illuminates the darkness. From the edge of the trees, I can’t get anyone’s attention. I try several times. I’m afraid to run into the gunfire and I hate myself for it.

  I stand for a moment, watching everything.

  The word that hovered over conversations like a black cloud comes to my mind: Waco.

  It’s then that I see the shape of a man emerge from the main house, body engulfed in flames. He screams, an ungodly sound. He inhales and chokes on the flames. I picture them winding their way through the branches of his lungs, climbing inward into his core, consuming him. He collapses, dead, fifty yards in front of me.

  More gunfire echoes in the night. Shots on both sides. It’s a firefight.

  I take a moment to collect my thoughts. I have to get Birdie out of here. At all costs. I decide to turn around and go back to her. I traipse through the trees, once again being pulled and tugged at by the arm-like branches of the cedars.

  I emerge, and the studio is still untouched by the fire. Not far away, though, a patch of brush has caught flame. It’s only a matter of time before the stale paintings provide just the incendiary material needed to catch the building on fire and burn everything inside.

  For a brief second, it strikes me as sad that Tom’s body will burn out here. It’s strange how we can have compassion and empathy even for the cruelest of people. Tom broke me in so many ways. He damaged me and punished me, and here I am, feeling sorry for his already-rotting body.

  I shake the thought from my mind long enough to get back inside the studio. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I call out to the pair of women.

  “Birdie?” I say. “Vanessa?”

  “Over here!” Birdie calls. Her voice has regained some strength.

  I let my eyes re-adjust and I jog over to the place where I left her. She sits in a pool of blood. The placenta at her feet. It’s then that I glance around, realizing that Vanessa is gone.

  “Where’s—”

  “She left. She took her,” Birdie gasps. “I’m too weak to get up.”

  “You have to get out of here,” I implore her.

  “I can’t move, Ione,” she says.

  “Where did she take the baby?”

  “I don’t know. She just left.”

  I look around as though I’ll find the answers that I seek in the paintings surrounding us. I don’t. I look back at Birdie.

  “She has a Jeep. There’s another one by the main house. Go. Take it. Find her.”

  I nod to Birdie. This final command from her might be the last thing she says to me, I realize. The fire is encroaching on the studio. There’s no stopping it. And I have to leave her here.

  I turn and step back out into the night.

  IONE

  The compound burns furiously in the night. My eyes need no time to adjust, the illumination provided by the flames amply supplies enough information for me to make sense of what’s going on around me. Flames stretch ever skyward, reaching higher and higher as each structure on the ranch falls victim to their wrath. I run once more through the little bit of forest, emerging on the other side to see the entirety of the place—the main house, the library, the common areas, and the cabins—burn with a rage that Dylan Thomas would have approved of.

  I realize that my breathing has turned ragged, shortened. I take each abbreviated breath, not able to fully fill my lungs to capacity and get the oxygen that my brain desperately needs. It feels like Tom’s hands are at my throat all over again.

  I force myself to calm down. I count. One, two, three, four—imagining the sound that my nails made on that glass top table at the bar that I last saw Wes at. I breathe in and for a moment I swear I can smell his cologne.

  “No,” I whisper to myself.

  This is a thought of the dying. And I’m not ready to give up yet.

  With newfound awareness about the dire nature of the situation, I steel myself for what I have to do. I spot a Jeep not far from the main house, unoccupied. The fire threatens to consume it, too. I race towards it, saying a prayer that the keys have been left inside.

  I get there. Fire reflects against the candy apple red paint, turning the vehicle orange. It’s close enough that I’m trapped between the heat of the fire and the warmth being bounced back off of the metal of the door. I throw it open.

  Inside, I scramble for the keys. I flip the visor down and they fall into my lap. I sigh, relief flooding my body as surely as any physical sensation I’ve ever known. It’s better than sex.

  I stick the key in the ignition and turn it. The engine roars to life and I throw the vehicle in gear. I look around for the hint of taillights. For a hint of where Vanessa might have gone. And then it occurs to me that there’s only one other way out of this place.

  The canyon where the journalist told me to go.

  I hit the gas and drive like I’ve just been hired as an extra in an action movie. I speed through the flames, hoping they won’t lick the gas tank and send me ricocheting towards the moon.

  They don’t, and I pass the rest of the ranch, leaving it behind. The dirt road before me that leads over to the neighboring ranch is lit only by starlight. Anywhere else, it wouldn’t be enough. But out here, it’s plenty. The gaseous bulbs provide enough light to turn th
e path before me to a milky blue. The moon helps, too. And for the first time, I realize that it’s full tonight.

  I make a silent wish to whatever gods that may be and pray that I find Vanessa.

  It’s then that I spot a pair of red eyes in the distance. Taillights.

  Her vehicle swerves, missing something. I wonder for a moment if it’s an animal. A coyote maybe. Or a bobcat. One of the many predators that inhabit the desolate landscape out here. I keep my eyes peeled, not wanting to come across anything that might slow me down.

  I see something moving in the tall grass to my right. I brake abruptly as a pack of coyotes runs across the road. I don’t honk. I don’t feel the rage I normally associate with being cut off in the city. This is different. This place is wild. This is their home and I’m the interloper.

  I come to a stop as the last of the pack turns to look at me while it crosses the dirt trail. His eyes glow green in the bright headlights of the Jeep. He disappears, cutting into the tall grass on the left of the road, parting it like butter beneath a warm knife.

  I don’t have time to marvel at the natural wonders out here. I don’t really have time to worry about the fact that once I find Vanessa, I’ll have to get out of the Jeep and be on the same playing field as the coyotes, and God knows what else.

  Putting the pedal to the floor, I speed on through the night, trying my best to catch up with the Jeep in front of me. I watch as she nears the end of the dirt trail. We’re getting close to the creek. I have no idea what plan she has once we get there. But soon enough, I pull up on the edge of the dried creek bed next to Vanessa’s Jeep. The lights are on in the interior. When I throw open my door, I can hear her vehicle dinging with the insistence that she’s left the keys in the ignition.

  I rush around to the driver’s side door. It’s open. I look inside on the off chance that she’s left the baby behind, but she hasn’t.

  The Jeep is empty. No trace of Vanessa or the child aside from the keys dangling in the ignition. I kill the engine and listen to the still night.