Vacation

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  The priest leaves, and another enters.

  He’s an older man, with a skeleton for a face. He tells me about the Agency, and about his addiction, and then he says, “God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end. No one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being. But what if the act is indirect? Sometimes I think we’re wrong to collect these children here. They are orphans. They would most likely die without our aid. But is this life we give them a preferred alternative to death? I negotiated the treaties between the church and the power players of this region. When the children are old enough, they’re taken by Weis or Blackbeard or the others. We call this adoption. Ha! I hope God can hear my words through your ears. I have faith that he can.”

  Priest after priest, this goes on for hours.

  Afterward, the sindoor opens, and I step out of the confessional. Nearby children point at me and shout, “Monster!” and run off laughing.

  The priests shake my hand and thank me, and they vomit in their pots.

  All the time we’re in this place, the priests ignore Aubrey completely. They don’t talk to her. They don’t even look at her. I wonder if they’re doing this because they don’t want to be more tempted than they already are.

  The sound of planes shakes the glass, but the priests remain as calm as the stained-glass figures.

  When the noise subsides, the priests and children head outside, and we follow. Crates dot the forest clearing. Before long, horses and wagons are brought from behind the church, and the priests and children load the cargo.

  Aubrey and I don’t help.

  After the preparations are complete, most of the priests climb into the wagons, and all of the children return to the church.

  The first priest who spoke to me, speaks to me again, from atop a wagon, reins in hand. “We’re crossing the border. We can’t promise you safe passage, but it is safer with us than alone. Are you heading in that direction?”

  I turn to Aubrey.

  She’s already climbing into the wagon.

  Within minutes the priests among us are asleep, twitching and shivering, and Aubrey and I are left alone in wakefulness. But it doesn’t feel that way. This Vacation must be a dream. Instead of obtaining souvenirs, I leave parts of myself behind.

  Blood and shit and tears.

  This can’t be right.

  Part 11

  “You should sleep,” Aubrey says. “We probably won’t get another opportunity for a while. You need the rest, after what happened to you.”

  “I can’t sleep,” I say.

  “Is it the pain?”

  “No, that’s the strange thing.”

  She takes my hand, and rests it in a bowl of fingers on her lap. “My mother and my grandmother were fortune tellers. I would’ve been too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “They taught me a little before they died.” She closes her eyes. Her fingers curl a little around my palm. “Everyone has an animal spirit inside them. Yours is a bird. This is a problematic spirit to have. Some animals are content staying where they are, but not yours. It’s not just a matter of wanting to fly free. You have to.”

  “What should I do?”

  “I don’t know. What I can tell you is that you’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”

  For a while, we’re sitting there, bouncing, hand in hands.

  That is, until one of the priests explodes.

  The first dead body I ever saw was Uncle Timothy lying arms at his sides with makeup on. Death didn’t sneak up on me. I snuck up on it, as slow as and careful as I wanted. And when I did finally make my way to the casket, you held me up, Mom, after my tippy-toes failed me. Everything was so slow and quiet.

  Now, Aubrey yanks me out of the wagon, both of us splattered with blood. Gunshots roar. Priests scramble and flail. Horses buck and grumble. We’re in an open clearing, and men in black fire at us, bits and pieces of them visible among the trees. We duck down behind a wheel, next to the old priest with a skeleton face.

  Our wagon doesn’t move, because our horse is already dead. The other horses drag their burdens around with all their horsepower. I want to free them from their harnesses, but I can’t.

  I look away.

  Beside me, white powder trickles out the bullet holes in a fallen crate, like an hour glass that can never be reset.

  “Fucking Tics,” the priest says. “They will know God’s wrath.”

  As if triggered by the old man’s words, gunfire and battle cries thunder from behind us.

  We spin around, and there’s Weis and his bald soldiers, firing at the men in black.

  “Let’s go,” Aubrey says. She takes my hand, and we head right, away from the men in black and away from Weis.

  We risk being hit from both sides.

  As we make a run for it, I look over and see Weis. He fires his weapon like a pro. I guess Aubrey was wrong.

  There’s a girl standing beside the Sergeant, firing her own weapon. Her face isn’t a face at all. It’s a massive, gnarled burn mark.

  Soon, we’re out of the clearing, back in the thick of trees. The battle sounds fade from our ears. In time, it’s nothing but a memory. But I shouldn’t say that. Nothing and memory don’t belong in the same sentence.

  We stop running only when we both collapse out of exhaustion.

  I notice that I’m holding my nose closed with my fingers. I let go.

  “Who were those people?” I say, my words broken up by heavy breaths. Somehow, I think this information is important. As if it would make me feel better.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “The priest called them Tics, whatever that means.” She struggles to stand again. “We have to keep moving. It’s not safe here.”

  “Is it safe anywhere?”

  “Safer.” She helps me up, and we continue. “I’m sorry I almost got you killed. I thought saving you was the right thing to do. I could go to America and you wouldn’t have to betray your friends in the Garden.”

  “They’re not my friends.”

  “You may not think of yourself as their friend, but they think of you that way. Noh cares about you. You know that.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I say. “But…I do appreciate what you’ve done for me. I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Yes.”

  She grins.

  Would it really be so bad marrying this girl?

  I’ve never trusted anyone the way I trust her now. As a couple, I could let her make all the decisions. I could soar through life on her wings.

  No, that wouldn’t be bad at all.

  I take her hand, and she doesn’t move it away, and that’s all the fortune telling I need.

  Aubrey steps out onto the beach, and I’m lagging behind, still concealed among the trees. In the water, there’s a long black ship without any sails. The sort Tolkien’s orcs would take out to sea. A line of still tanker trucks moan on a paved zone, hoses trailing from their backsides into the water. I see the back of Aubrey’s hair, and I don’t know this the last time I’ll ever see her.

  This moment, right now.

  After this moment, a group of men and women dressed in white hike from the right, and create a wall of bodies between me and Aubrey. They have guns, and they face the sea, and they have to see Aubrey. But they haven’t spotted me.

  “Run!” Aubrey says.

  And I do run. But I don’t want to. My legs feel like they’re moving on their own, like Noh is controlling me again. But that doesn’t make sense. I’m not asleep.

  No, this has to be Noh.

  “Fuck you, bitch,” I whisper, but deep down, I’m glad she’s making the decision for me. Because I don’t want to know which way I’d choose to run.

  “Dude!”

  I turn my head, and here’s Odin beside me.

  “Man, am I glad to see you,” he says. “I didn’t think Noh was gonna turn you
around in time.”

  A man in white leaps out from behind a nearby tree. He points his weapon at my face. “Hold it!”

  I freeze.

  “Man, thank god,” Odin says. “You’re one of Blackbeard’s guys.”

  “Yeah?” the man says, pointing at Odin now. “So?”

  “Listen, dude. You must be new here, because you guys already know me. I’m with the Garden.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe I should kill you and not take the chance.”

  “I know for a fact that Blackbeard requires you bring all prisoners to him, so he can decide what to do with them.”

  “True, but I could kill you anyway.”

  “Your friends’d hear the gunfire and come check it out.”

  “I could kill you with my bare hands.”

  ”We’d scream loud enough for them to hear.”

  “I’d hide your bodies and say it must’ve been some animal screaming.”

  “You think they’d really believe that?”

  He sighs, and lowers his gun a little. “Probably not. Let’s go.”

  The black helicopter lifts from the black ship and drops a shimmering sphere. Soon, a pulse shakes my body, as if the ship’s heart has exploded, and bloody flames squirt up from the vessel’s hull. The line of tanker trucks disappear into the forest on a path of broken stone.

  “We have to find Aubrey,” I tell Odin again. “They got her.”

  Odin glances at me with a funny look on his face. “Everything’s gonna be alright. I know this guy.”

  The man in white motions at me with his gun. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing,” Odin says.

  After the copter lands, a man hops out, in the same white uniform as all the other gun-wielding people around this place. He’s fat with a long white beard. Maybe this is Santa 364 days of the year.

  “Prisoners,” our captor says, when the copter blades quiet down.

  The bearded man, who must be Blackbeard, despite the contradiction, pats Odin on the shoulder. “Odin here’s an old friend of mine. Who’s this fellow?”

  “My name’s Bernard,” I say.

  “He’s Bernard,” Odin says. “He’s with me.”

  “Good to hear it.” Blackbeard slaps my back, then turns to our once-captor. “Matek, you can stop pointing that thing at them now.”

  “Oh.” Matek lowers the gun to his side. “Sorry.”

  “Your people captured a friend of mine,” I say.

  “Do you know what he’s trying to say?” Blackbeard says.

  Odin shrugs. He looks in my eyes and says, “Let him go already, Noh. He’ll be fine. Plus, he’s freaking us all out.”

  Something inside me changes. I don’t understand.

  “Now man, what were you trying to say?” Odin says.

  “We have to find Aubrey,” I say. “That’s not her real name. They captured her.”

  Blackbeard scratches his beard. “Aside from you two, the only other detainees were the oil tanker workers, but we left them to their rafts.”

  “She was taken on this beach just a few minutes ago by your men,” I say.

  “I’ll ask around, but it seems unlikely,” Blackbeard says. “They know the consequences of keeping something like this from me.”

  “Who is this girl, man?” Odin says.

  “She saved me from Weis,” I say. “She has a wooden leg.”

  “Weis’ daughter?” Odin and Blackbeard say together.

  “Daughter?” I say.

  “Those two are inseparable, man,” Odin says. “There’s no way she’d help you.”

  “She did.”

  “If this is true, then my men may be taking her back to Weis,” Blackbeard says. “They want the reward that’s undoubtedly coming to them.”

  “You have to stop them,” I say. “Please.”

  Blackbeard shakes his head. “Secrets don’t last long among the Meek, and Weis would find out eventually. He isn’t a cold man, but when it comes to his daughter, he wouldn’t hesitate killing me, even if it meant sacrificing his army to do it. I hope you don’t think me selfish, prizing my life above the woman you love, but you see my life is directly connected to the welfare of my country. I may be a pirate, but sometimes that’s the only hero a poor country can afford.”

  I tell myself my fear of Blackbeard is the reason I don’t say, “I don’t love her.”

  Because that’s not what I’m afraid of.

  Part 12

  The inside of the copter’s less thunderous than I expect. Which makes this is an awkward silence, instead of the natural variety.

  Blackbeard rummages through a cooler beside the bolted sofa he’s sitting on. He pulls out a bottle and glasses. “Wine?”

  Odin and I nod.

  We’re drinking, and Blackbeard says, “I never did apologize for your eye.”

  Odin waves him off. “Dude, that was my fault. I was trying to stab you.”

  Blackbeard laughs. “Oh yes. I suppose that’s why I never apologized.” He takes another long sip of the dark red. “Does your friend know the story?”

  “No,” Odin says. “He’s new.”

  Blackbeard turns to me. “The first time I captured this fellow, I had no idea who he was. He said he was Garden, but my instincts told me he was Tic. My instincts you see have failed me on more than one occasion. I’ve been trying instead to rely on logic and reason, but it’s harder than it sounds.” He chortles into his cup.

  “What’s a Tic?” I say. That’s the same word the old priest used referring to the men in black.

  Blackbeard arches a white slug of an eyebrow. “When you said he was new, I didn’t know you meant new.”

  “Yeah,” Odin says. “New new.”

  Blackbeard places his glass on the bolted-down wood table in front of us. On a coaster. “TIC stands for Those In Charge,” he says. “These are people, like the oil tanker workers, who work for dominant countries with resources enough to sustain themselves, and then some. We, on the other hand, the Garden and Weis and me, are the Meek. It doesn’t stand for anything. It simply means our people and our countries are desperate, and we do what we have to do, in order to obtain what we need.” He booms in laughter again. “Don’t let the name fool you, son. Us Meek are strong and smart and sometimes organized as hell. Our only weakness is that we can’t affect the big picture. Although, if the Meek are going to inherit the Earth, the Garden will be the ones to do it. That’s why, even after Odin’s failed attempt to stab me, I refrained from executing him, for the off chance that he really was Garden. I’m glad I did.”

  “Me too,” Odin says.

  Blackbeard glances out the window. “I assume you want to keep the secret location of the Garden stronghold a secret, so we’ll drop you off at a random spot in this general vicinity. Good?”

  “Yeah, good,” Odin says.

  In a few minutes, we’ve landed, and Blackbeard waves goodbye. “I envy you,” he tells me. “If I had a chance to be born in another life, it would be with the Garden.”

  The copter takes off, and before we start walking, Odin says, “I’m sorry I had to play dumb back there, man, but I couldn’t let Blackbeard know about our device.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say.

  “Um…maybe it’s better if Noh explains it to you. I don’t really understand it myself. Plus, that’s her thing. She likes all of us getting upset at her, so we don’t fight with each other so much. I hope she gets off on it. Otherwise it’s just sad.”

  I have a feeling it’s just sad no matter what.

  Instead of the wavy tunnels of the old Garden stronghold, here’s angulated carved stone. Small wooden boxes (which Odin informs me are holding dead animals) plug the shallow niches in the walls. And real coffins now encircle the coffin-like garden beds in the largest chamber. Pillars inscribed with human figures line the walls, but they don’t touch the ceiling. They look important but hold up nothing.

  “Dude, I gotta go
.” Odin says. “Oh, don’t go wandering. You could suffocate some places.” He leaves me by the coffins, and disappears into a dark hall.

  I sit on one, and watch the people in the garden. Most are gathered around a miniature theater that stands in front of a coffin. Two marionettes wobble about, dancing or fighting or both, maybe. And I know it’s Laetitia behind the scenes, lying on the coffin, because her spikes peek out of the top of the theater. The audience laughs, and maybe I want to walk over there.

  But Noh steps through a dark archway beside me. “Mr. Johnson, you’re back.” She bites at her fingernails. “Odin should’ve told me you arrived. I would’ve been here sooner.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  She takes a seat beside me, on the wide-eyed face of a man etched in stone. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. It wasn’t my intention to put you in any greater danger than that of all of us in the Garden.”

  “I was the one who ran away.” Somehow, I want to defend her actions. Maybe because of what Odin said about her taking the blame for everything. Maybe because I lost Aubrey, and I want someone to like me.

  “All new acquisitions run away after seeing the photos for the first time.” She squeezes her hands, as if grabbing at the album in her memories. “But ultimately, each one returns to us. You, however, were gone too long, so I checked up on you and found you with Weis. Once learning of his plot to invade, I knew we had to move. Luckily we had a secret exit from the caves he didn’t know about. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Odin inferred that there’s something you need to tell me about the device. He wouldn’t say it himself.”

  She bites at her bottom lip. “I suppose I must tell you. Secrets don’t last long in this place.”

  Before she has time to say more, Odin rushes over. “Hey man,” he says to Noh. “Have you seen Pari?”

  “Not since she went out,” she says.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “A few hours.”

  “Shit.”

  Alarms blast.

  “Shit,” Odin says again.

  Noh and Odin sprint through an archway, down a dark hall.

  I follow.

  Soon, I’m in a room littered with computer monitors and electronics. In the corner, there’s a helmet with wires snaking out the back. It has to be the monstrosity she used to enter my dreams and control my body. I could walk over and smash it. But I don’t.