by Tim McBain
Now some people were staring at the loser sitting by herself in the corner. The one with tears in her eyes. I gathered up my tray and dumped my trash and dirty dishes and hurried out.
I kept my head tucked as I made my way through camp so no one would see my wet eyes. When my tent came into view, and I started to wonder how I’d explain the fact that I was obviously upset to my mom, I realized I’d forgotten the coffee.
Idiot.
I looped back around and jogged back to the mess tent. The frustration actually distracted me from everything else, and I was able to calm down.
The KPs didn’t want to let me leave the mess tent with one of their mugs, but I swore oaths on about seven different gods that I would bring it back as soon as I was done with it. Benji was there, and he finally relented. I hustled out, eyes on the creamy brown liquid in the cup to keep it from splashing over the edge.
I wasn’t watching where I was going and almost collided with someone. When that someone put their hands on my shoulders, I looked up.
It was Max.
Nightmare scenario.
“Hedy,” he said, grinning down at me like he wasn’t a lying, friend-fucking piece of garbage. “Or is it Mendel now? I can’t remember if we decided on one or the other.”
I mustered a weak smile.
“Yeah. I don’t know.”
He held something in his hand, and he waved it at me.
“I found this in my tent.”
It was the paperback of Odd Thomas that I’d tossed into his tent after… well, after I’d seen what I’d seen.
“Right,” I said. “I finished it.”
“You did? What did you think?”
Max’s eyes glowed with excitement.
I wondered if he was faking it. He had to be, right? I didn’t understand how he could actually care what I thought, care about me at all — even as a friend — and then do what he’d done.
“It was good.”
He frowned then, his fingers reaching for my shoulder again.
“You’re awfully monosyllabic this morning. Are you OK?”
I lowered my eyes and stepped away from him, not wanting him to touch me anymore.
“Yeah, I just…” The coffee sloshed against the ceramic vessel clutched in my hands. “I need to take this back to my mom is all.”
“Oh. OK,” he said and moved aside to let me pass.
He sounded hurt. Part of me was glad.
I made it back to the tent without spilling a drop of the coffee. My mom sat up for the first time all morning and sipped at it. I thought she’d ooh and aah over it like adults always do with coffee, but she just drank slowly and quietly. She drank about half of it before setting the cup aside and lying back down.
“Mom?”
“Mm?”
“Do you need anything else?”
“No, honey. But thank you. The coffee definitely helped. I think if I lay here a little while longer, I might be able to get rid of it for good.”
She smiled. I saw some pink in her cheeks, which was a relief. She’d looked pretty pale before she’d had the coffee.
“Is it OK if I run to the porta-potties really quick?” I asked.
Her brows bunched together. I guess she didn’t know why I was asking permission to go to the bathroom. Then she sighed.
“Oh. Right. You know, we should talk about all of that some more. But later,” she said.
I probably should have been ecstatic that it sounded like she was rethinking the terms of my grounding. But I knew it wouldn’t last. Not once she’d had a chat with Sgt. Foressi. I hardly cared, to be honest. I didn’t have any reason to go anywhere but here, the mess tent, and the outhouses at this point.
“Go ahead. You don’t need to stay cooped up in here on my account. Just please don’t go outside the fence.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “Do you want me to come wake you up before our shift?”
“If you would,” she said.
Even though she’d given me leave to do whatever, I came straight back to the tent after peeing. Like I said, I really didn’t have anywhere else to go.
The most hilarious part about all of this is that I didn’t say anything to Max about Breanne earlier — and I won’t ever say anything to him about it — because I think he’d be embarrassed.
Anyway, I hardly fucking care anymore. I guess that’s what happens when shit gets really real. Everything comes into focus. What’s important and what’s not.
I should know that by now, after what happened with my dad and all, but I guess you still let yourself get wound up in all these phony thoughts and feelings. Thinking they’re real. I barely even know Max or Breanne. So who fucking cares what they do? They can go off and fuck each other like bunnies for all I care.
Getting pretty bored just sitting here in the quiet of the tent. My mom was already asleep by the time I got back from the shitter. I guess I’m going to have to go find something to fill the time until it’s time to head to the quarantine tent.
Killing five hours took an eternity. I found a shady spot behind one of the tents and hunkered down there for a while. Eventually, my butt and legs got sore from kneeling and sitting on the ground. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I decided to walk around.
I worried at first that I might run into Breanne or Max. But with each step, I cared a little less.
I rounded a corner and boom — there was Breanne, walking with Collette and Ginny, who both said hi. But Breanne walked right past without saying a word or even looking at me.
Ridiculous, right? She pulls the bitch move of the century and then gets mad at me. Maybe she’s pissed because I didn’t take her drama bait. I don’t know. It’s funny that she couldn’t make it five minutes before she ran off and got new friends.
Well crap. I don’t know what to do. Our shift in the quarantine tent starts in twenty minutes, but when I got back here to wake my mom up, she was gone. I waited around the porta-potties for ten minutes and then checked the mess tent. She wasn’t in either place, and I convinced myself that wherever she’d gone, she’d be back by now. But she’s not.
Maybe she went to the quarantine tent early? I guess I should go find out.
Your frazzled BFF,
Erin
Delfino
Outside of New Bern, North Carolina
4 years, 49 days after
The shadow of Hellickson strode down the path once again, and your humble narrator followed.
It was darker than last time. I had to trust my memory of the way as much as anything. And yet I wasn’t so fearful as I had been. I don’t know. I guess having a loaded gun in your hand can do wonders for your confidence.
I skittered my feet along the edge of the trail as I had before, using that line where the grass began to keep myself on course. The mucus dew adhered itself to my toes and smeared its cold slime up into the arches. Dreadful.
It was disorienting to watch that shifting blackness ahead of me that I knew must be Hellickson. Here and there, I could see him well enough, but the shade kept swallowing him up, reducing him to an indistinct flutter in the dark.
And the sea was angry like I had never experienced in my time out here. Thrashing and lurching in the distance. I could hear the spray sizzle up every time a wave slapped at the beach.
In those spots where the moonlight glinted strongest, I could see enough to know that Hellickson carried a bag, just as he had last time. But it seemed different somehow, too. It was lighter, I realized eventually. The bag wasn’t nearly so full as before. I didn’t know what to make of that.
The crash and slosh of the ocean faded as I crossed the lane and moved into the woods, and the blackness deepened around me. Hellickson vanished altogether.
What little sense of place I’d had fled as the sound of the waves receded. And that familiar discomfort began to settle over me. Something about all of this wasn’t right, and it hadn’t been from the start. I had the strongest feeling that I was about to find out why.
I adjusted my grip on the gun just to remind myself that I had it, some little touch of power reassurance. It helped a little.
As I stepped into the blackest stretch of the path, the idea that all of this might be a gasoline hallucination occurred to me, and goose bumps sprouted up and down my arms.
I could picture it so well — me lying on my back on the floor of the cabin, that damn gas rag still draped over my mouth and nose, killing me with every breath, making these dark visions dance across my failing nervous system.
Just then, as I walked into nothingness, the notion made so much sense. It was a hell of a lot more plausible than the warped reality of Hellickson and the altar.
But no. This was no hallucination. No dream. This was real.
When I got to the clearing, I could see him at last. He stood over the slab of stone once more, fiddling with the bag, his back to me.
My belly puckered as I watched this, a sick feeling swirling in my gut. Jesus. What was this creep doing?
And I could see him in my head just how he’d looked at dinner earlier, staring at me all dead-eyed like some kind of goddamn wacko. Wound too tight, this one was. I should have sensed it earlier, should have seen the signs sooner.
I hid in the ferns, nearly the same spot as last time, and I held my breath as he acted out his routine.
The bag turned upside down and something tumbled out onto the altar. Something a little wet, I thought, though I couldn’t see it well.
Hellickson’s shoulders heaved a few times after that. He stood over the altar for longer than he had on his prior trip, and I thought his body language suggested some unresolved tension. Maybe disappointment. Maybe something more. Finally, he turned to go.
This time I wouldn’t merely leave after he was gone. This time I would see what he’d walked out here to dump. Or to offer.
Erin
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
12 days after
Kel-
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
OK. I have to calm down so I can get this out. Because if I don’t write the words out, I will go insane.
When I got to the quarantine tent, the morning group of volunteers was just leaving. I know pretty much all of them. I ran up to an older woman named Marta.
“Hey, is my mom inside? We’re on the next shift, but I can’t find her anywhere.”
Marta’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. I waited.
After what seemed like an eternity, she said, “No one told you?”
I wanted to grab her by her chicken neck and shake her until her waddle fell off.
“Told me what? What happened?”
“She’s inside, but they think she’s got the pl—” Her voice halted. “She’s been quarantined.”
It hit me that she’d stopped herself from saying plague.
They thought my mom had the plague. But that wasn’t right. It was just a migraine.
I pushed past her. A group of nurses was exiting the tent, and Lisa caught me by the arm.
“Erin, you can’t go in there.”
“My mom is inside.”
“I know. And Dr. Kaiser is doing everything he can for her. But visiting hours are in the morning.”
“Visiting hours? I’m in there all the time. I have a shift now!”
Lisa sighed and pulled me along the side of the tent so we weren’t standing in the way of people trying to get by.
“Honey, you’re underage. You were allowed to volunteer with your mom supervising, but you can’t be in the tent on your own.”
“She will be supervising if she’s sitting right there.”
“You know what I mean.”
Something itched on my cheek, and when I went to brush it away, I realized it was a tear. I was crying.
“This is stupid,” I said. “She’s not sick. She just had a headache.”
Lisa gave me the kind of pitying look I remember seeing when my dad got close to the end.
“Why don’t I walk you back to your tent?”
She put a hand on my shoulder, and I guess she must have guided me all the way through camp, because the next thing I knew I was sitting on my cot, and she was asking if I needed anything.
I shook my head. Lisa patted my hand and left.
None of it made any sense. We’d been in that tent for weeks, and neither one of us had shown any symptoms. And we’d always been meticulous about our hand washing and all that. Everyone is. How could she get sick now?
They were wrong. I knew it. She probably just had food poisoning or the flu or something. She’d recover in a few days. She had to.
I don’t know how long I sat there before the tent flaps stirred and Sgt. Foressi poked her head through.
“Have you collected your things?”
“What?” I croaked.
My throat was all swollen and phlegmy from crying.
“Your things. You’re moving.”
My head snapped up.
“Why?”
“Because you’re a minor.”
“Yeah, but…”
“I really don’t have time to argue about it with you. Please gather your things.”
“I’m sixteen. I’m not a fucking kid.”
The Dragon Lady took a step closer and put her finger in my face.
“Listen up, you little brat. Now that you’re under my supervision, we do things my way. If you become a liability because of behavior problems, I am authorized by Sgt. Grantham to have you sent to another camp.”
I scoffed, even though the threat sent a ripple of fear through my bones.
“They’d never let you separate me from my mom.”
The corners of her lips quirked into a tiny smirk.
“How many days do you think she’ll last? I heard she’s pretty far gone. Already coughing up blood.”
I stood so fast I bumped into her.
“You’re full of shit!”
Her hand lashed out in a blur, and the back of her knuckles smacked into my cheek.
Fresh tears sprang to my eyes, more out of surprise than anything else. And the fact that she’d hit me was so shocking, I just started packing up my stuff like she said.
When I got to the Kids Tent, Izzy saw me and immediately lit up.
“Erin!”
She insisted on helping me lay out my sleeping bag and settling the rest of my stuff. She asked if I wanted to play Uno, but I told her I was tired. I laid on my cot and closed my eyes, but I didn’t sleep. I wish I could have just slept through the rest of the day and night. All I wanted was to see my mom. I knew that if I could just see her, I’d know for sure she wasn’t really sick.
But I won’t be able to get into the quarantine tent as a visitor until tomorrow.
I feel like all of this has given me some clarity with the whole Max and Breanne thing. Like I can take it out of my head and hold it in my hand and gaze down upon it like a snow globe.
Maybe Breanne was right. Maybe I’m really upset because it feels like he chose Breanne over me. Maybe he did. Maybe that doesn’t have to mean there’s something wrong with me. Maybe that doesn’t have to mean there’s something wrong with them either. It just is.
Maybe he doesn’t like her at all, and it was just sex. Maybe that’s his right. And hers.
Maybe my mom is dying, and none of it really matters.
Erin
Delfino
Outside of New Bern, North Carolina
4 years, 49 days after
The whole region now smelled vaguely of rotting meat. Some sickening mix of dead things.
I couldn’t really see whatever had been spread over the altar, but I had a bad feeling about it. Even hovering right over top of it, it was an indistinct blackness spread out over the tabletop. Nothing more presented itself detail-wise. The smell had me thinking the worst.
I licked my lips a few times and plunged my hands toward whatever horror lay before me.
The first surface I felt was even slimier than the damned dew gunked up
between my toes. An object. Small and hard and gummy. I gripped it. The shape was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I held it up into the moonlight.
A fish head.
I let it drop to the ground and gagged a little. I resisted the urge to wipe my sticky fingers on my boxers.
A fish head?
What the hell?
It crossed my mind that he could be coming all the way out here to dump the scraps from our meals, maybe wanting to keep the raccoons and such away. That might make sense. But why wait until the middle of the night? And where did whatever scraps he’d dumped last time go? They had been gone by the following morning.
Something still didn’t add up.
I dug my hands back into the dark puddle spread over the altar.
This time I came away with fleshy strands wrapped around my fingers. Skin. Soft and moist. And long like strings. Like noodles. Some bits remained adhered to the other stuff on the altar, stretching when I pulled with some elasticity, like a handful of rubber bands.
I flung them down when I realized what they must be.
Innards. Intestines. Guts.
They seemed too big to be fish guts, though. Too thick. I didn’t want to think about it.
I held my hands away from my body. The only positive I could think of in the moment was the notion that at some point, your hands are as gross as they can get. After you’ve reached that state of being, there’s no further harm in touching more disgusting stuff, right? I figured I might as well finish the job.
With the tangled mess of guts out of the way, I could make out distinct shapes on top of the altar now. Definitely some fish spines and a few more heads. I went for a smaller clump off to the side.
Fur greeted my fingertips. Fine fur. And what I knew must be the little belly was soft to the touch. The core was firm but the outer layer had a give to it, a little squish to it. I’m no pathologist, but it was in some post-rigor state, I guess. I held it up to the moonlight, already knowing what I’d find.
The shrew. The one Hellickson had ripped away from Meatball in the afternoon.
