World of Trouble

by Ben H. Winters

  But I can’t do that, so I just say it as quickly as I can, tearing off the Band-Aid, “Three days,” and she breathes sharply and nods bravely but stumbles forward into my arms. I catch her and hold her small body to my chest and kiss her gently on the top of the head.

  The voice of Cortez, singsong in my ear. Everything reminds you of your sister.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  It’s just words, though. Just a bunch of tiny little words.

  Everything is exactly as it was.

  The headquarters of the Rotary Police Department is like a small gray ship docked in the gloom. The driveway a rough horseshoe of gravel. Two flagpoles, two beleaguered flags. I approach in sunrise silence, work shoes crunching on the gravel, like a mountain man returned to civilization after a long wilderness exile, only civilization is gone. It’s just the one dull municipal building, planted like a ruin in the center of an overgrown lawn. It’s raining again. It rained on and off all night.

  I slept again for five hours in the middle of the night on the side of the road, at my same YOU ARE HERE rest stop, my coat jacket folded neatly for a pillow, my police-department pistol in the crook of my arm.

  Now it’s morning and as I step off the road onto the grass I can sense them, feel them—I can practically hear them down there under my feet, nosing around in their underground lair, the basement warren they dug down into and took over, the maze they’ve occupied. My mind has built mythologies around them all, cloaked their names in malevolent auras. Tick, long-faced and bizarre. The very thin black girl, moody and cruel. Astronaut with his bushy black hair and his belt of weapons. All of them are listed now in black pen in my blue notebook. Suspects. Witnesses, though to what I am not yet sure. They’re all down there, scuttling around like spiders, and they’ve got my sister.

  It’s Monday now. Monday morning; 9:17, according to the Casio. Two days to go. I’m almost to the door of the station when there’s a sudden sharp scrape from just above me. The roof. I jump back from the door, draw the gun, and shout “Police!”

  Old habit. Can’t help it. My heart beats. Silence—ten seconds—twenty—me stepping slowly backward, one big step at a time, trying to get to a place where I can see what’s up there.

  Then the noise again, a scrape and then a rustle, and then new silence.

  I try again, louder. “If there is someone up there, show yourself immediately.” What do I say then? I’ve got a gun. Everybody’s got a stupid gun.

  “Police,” I say, one more time, and a hail of rocks and loose dirt flies out of the sky onto my face and my head. Tiny pebbles bounce off my scalp, dust fills my eyes.

  I grunt, spitting debris out of my mouth, and look up.

  “Oh, no! Policeman!” It’s Cortez, just his face, big and ugly and leering, jutting out over the lip of the building. “I didn’t see you there!”

  He cackles while I lower my gun. I clear my throat and hawk a thick clod of dirty spit out onto the lawn. A nasty trick, childish, somehow out of character for the man. All I can see of Cortez is his upper half. He’s lying down flat on the roof of the building, his torso extended over the edge, his big hands dangling down. His right hand is open, showing the palm, where he just let go of the dirt and rocks. His other hand is a tightly clenched fist. Behind him the sky is a fabric of gloomy gray clouds.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  Cortez shrugs. “Killing time. Hanging around. Investigating. I found solar panels up here, by the by. Hooked up to battery chargers. Whatever your sister and her playmates have got down there, it’s all charged up.”

  I nod, combing grit out of my mustache with my fingertips, recalling Atlee’s description of heavy crates, tromped down the stairs one at a time. What’s in the crates? And then that question provokes the other, the question I can’t answer and can’t shake: Where’d they get the helicopter?

  I swat it away, set my jaw against it. Stay on target.

  “Cortez, can you come down from there? We’ve got to get to work.”

  He stays where he is, props his face up on one hand, like he’s lolling on a summer lawn. “Cortez, they’re down there. I talked to the man who dropped in that wedge. What it sounds like is this was the backup plan, this was plan B. They realized that all this stuff about the scientist and the standoff burst was a fairy tale, and they went to ground.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Fascinating.”

  Cortez opens up his other hand and tosses a fresh rain of rocks and dirt onto my face. A small sharp shard catches in the corner of my eye.

  “Hey,” is all I have time to say before Cortez launches himself off the roof, his whole body all at once, flying down with arms extended, landing on top of me like a giant bat. He grabs the back of my hair and twists my head around and shoves my face into the muddy ground. Cortez’s arms are strong, he’s always been much stronger than he looks, he’s a tightly twisted coil. I thrash around, lift my mouth from the ground to say “Stop it,” and he bears down, a knee planted in my back. I don’t know what’s happening, this is somewhere between childish play-wrestling and him actually trying to hurt me right now, trying to break my back.

  “I also had my bucket up there,” hisses Cortez, “the bucket I’ve been pissing in. I was going to dump it on your stupid fucking cop head, but this is better.” He twists my neck hard to one side, crams my face deeper into the mud. “More intimate.”

  I’m lying here sputtering and wondering in what year of my theoretical future police career I would develop the skill to occasionally be the one who surprises the guy, instead of being the guy who gets surprised. In Next Time Around at Abigail’s mercy, her festooned with weaponry like a Christmas tree. Atlee frog-marching me through the woods. The unseen man in Rotary, behind his concrete blast wall, the nose of his machine gun. It’s like a joke, I’m like a cartoon character. Everybody gets the drop on Detective Henry Palace!

  “I thought we were friends,” Cortez growls. “Aren’t we friends?”

  “Yes.”

  I have managed somehow to wriggle around onto my back and face him, but now he’s clutching my face with his hand, ropy fingers spread out across my jaw and cheeks like a hockey mask. Mud and grit still thick in my throat.

  “Cortez—” I manage, through his fingers, and he tightens his grip.

  “I thought that we were partners.”

  Suddenly I get it. What he’s talking about. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  The girl, the cell, the key. It all seems so long ago: that flash decision, locking her up and hurling the key in there. The intervening days have been busy ones.

  “I am, Cortez,” I say. His eyes are angry slits, holes cut from a mask. “I’m sorry.”

  “You were just doing what you thought was right, is that it?” I nod, as much as I can with his fingers like tentacles wrapped tightly around my face. He tightens them. “You always do what you think is right. That’s your deal with yourself. Right?”

  “Yes.” My voice comes out muffled and distorted. “That’s right.”

  “Ech. Policeman.”

  He spits the word like a curse, an insult—Policeman—but then all at once he lets me loose and stands up laughing, a bully’s loud victorious laugh. He turns away because he thinks the conversation is over, but it’s not over, and I get up on all fours and launch myself like a wrestler at his knees and bring him down, I topple him like a tree and I’m on top of Cortez now, just like that, and throw a rabbit punch across his face.

  “Ow,” he says. “Fuck.”

  “How did you know?” I say. Gathering up the front of his dirty T-shirt. My hand hurts from hitting him, the palm burns and screams fire, folded tightly inside my fist.

  “How did I know what?” But he’s grinning, licking the droplet of blood that’s sprung up on his lower lip. He knows what I mean.

  “How did you know that I locked the cell door?” He leers. I lean in. “How?”

  The grin widens, showing all his c
rooked teeth, before abruptly disappearing. His face becomes sincere—confessional. I’m still on top of him, pinning him. “I got lonely,” he says. “I have been so lonely. And time is running out, you know?” His voice lowers to a ghoulish whisper. His eyes are frozen pools. “I thought I would just go and have a big time. Her and me.” He licks his lips. “You would have done the same thing.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Henry boy. Lonely boy. Look into your heart.”

  “No,” I say, and I pull my face away but he curls his head up toward me and whispers, right in my ear. “Hey. Idiot. She’s awake.”

  I let go of Cortez and leap to my feet and run. Oh, God. Oh, no. He’s laughing on the ground, dying laughing as I barrel toward the entrance, laughing and yelling at my back. “She’s been up since last night. She woke me up screeching but she won’t let me in!” His voice gleeful, rich with delight, me grabbing the handle and yanking open the door. “She’s pretty upset, Henry, old boy. Pretty upset.” He’s reveling in my distress, hollering after me as I run. “I can’t believe you hit me!”

  * * *

  Lily is standing against the back wall of the cell, shivering, with her arms wrapped around her body, holding herself tight. The umbilical stub of the IV line dangles from her forearm where she tore it free. She has also torn the package of gauze off her throat, and her wound is raw and pink and glistening like grotesque alien jewelry.

  “Who are you?” she says fiercely, and I say, “My name is Henry. I’m a policeman,” and she howls, “What did you do to me? What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.”

  She stares at me, fearful and defiant, like she’s a sick animal and I’m here to put her down. She points with a trembling finger at the IV bag hung from the ceiling behind me. “What is that?”

  “Saline solution, that’s all. Ninety percent sodium chloride,” I say, and then when I clock the disbelieving horror in her eyes I say, “Water, Lily, it’s salt water, to rehydrate you. You needed fluids.”

  “Lily?”

  “Oh, right, I …” Why am I calling her that? Where did we get that name? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. She’s gaping at me. Baffled, distraught. My fingers are white where I’m gripping the bars.

  “I peed,” she says suddenly.

  “Hey, that’s great,” I say. “Good for you.” Like I’m talking to a baby, just saying words. “That means you’re getting better.” Trying to keep calm; keep her calm. “I put you in here, okay? You were asleep. But you’re safe. You’re fine. You’re going to be just fine.”

  It’s not true—she knows it’s not true—everything is not going to be just fine—it’s not so. Of course not. She’s deathly pale, shivering violently, her face a piteous mixture of fear and wonder.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m trying to find out.”

  “Where am I?” She licks her dry lips and looks around. I don’t know where to start. You’re in the police station. You’re in the Muskingum River Watershed. You’re on Earth. I don’t know how much she knows. I wonder what I look like. I wish I had shaved. I wish I were smaller. I smell like dirt and fire.

  “You’re upstairs,” I say finally.

  “Where are the others?”

  The back of my neck tingles. The others. Tick and Astronaut and the black girl and the kid with the bright blue sneakers.

  “I don’t know where they are.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Henry Palace.”

  “Henry,” she whispers, and then, “Palace,” and she looks at me, her eyes widening as they travel over my face.

  “Henry, Henry,” she says, and then she stares right at me, right into my eyes. “Do you have a sister?”

  * * *

  It’s the same as the last time: I chased the dog and Cortez me, the three of us chasing toward the girl’s body in the clearing, but now it’s just me chasing Lily, which is not her name, cracking branches and brush beneath me, my flat feet thumping on the soil, brambles tearing at my pant legs like vengeful spirits trying to catch me and make me fall. Same as last time—same route—down a westward slope away from the police station, along the line of the small creek—but then Lily breaks left and I follow her, she crosses a small swinging rope bridge, and I follow and follow.

  Hide-and-seek. Cutting through the woods. It’s raining. My heart is galloping in my chest, leaping out ahead of me.

  This is fine, I think crazily, this long moment of just running. The part before we get there, wherever we’re going. My pulse is an ocean roar in my ears. The sun is a pale yellow circle through a thickness of rain clouds. Let’s just run forever. Because I can feel it, oh man I can feel it—I know what’s coming.

  Lily stops abruptly at a low line of bushes, and her back stiffens, her head turns slightly to the left and then down, her whole body flinching as she sees whatever it is that she is seeing. I know what it is, though, I already know. Tightness in my chest like someone has tied it off with a belt. A burning in my lungs from running. I already know.

  I move in slow motion. Past Lily’s stationary form, through a low layer of brush into a little meadow, an opening in the trees.

  There’s a body in the center of the clearing. I stumble forward over tree roots, tripping over my stupid feet. I pitch forward, right myself, and then crouch, panting, beside the body.

  It’s her, I know it’s her. She’s facedown but it’s her.

  Lily is at the perimeter behind me, moaning. I turn over the body and it’s just her, I don’t get even an instant of uncertainty, not the slightest momentary reprieve: the face is immediately and unquestionably Nico’s face. Jeans, long-sleeve T-shirt, tan sandals like the ones Lily is wearing. She fought back, too, before she was slain: bruising below the eye, scratches on her cheeks and forehead, a thin rusted trickle of blood under her nose. Bar fight wounds, nothing serious, except then you look down just a little bit and there’s her throat—torn open, ugly, pink and red and black—but I go ahead and I ignore all of that, I do, I go ahead and I take her pulse—it’s ridiculous, she’s cold and waxen, but I place two fingers on the soft hollow area just below the lower jawbone, just above the brutal red line of her wound, I put my fingers in place and watch a minute go by on the Casio and there’s no pulse because she’s dead.

  Her face tilts gently to one side, and her eyes are closed, as if in sleep. She’s at peace, they would say that, people always say things like that, but it’s an inaccurate statement—thoughts are thundering around in my head, grief is choking its way up my throat—she’s not at peace, she’s dead, she was at peace when she was laughing at something clever someone said, she was at peace when she was smoking a cigarette, listening to Sonic Youth. She liked all that ’80s and ’90s stuff, the college-radio acts. Hüsker Dü, the Pixies. That smart-ass Replacements song about the flight attendant.

  There’s dirt on her cheeks. I wipe it away with my thumb. A few strands of hair are matted across her forehead like delicate fractures. Her whole life, Nico was so pretty and always trying to pretend she wasn’t. So pretty, and so annoyed about it.

  I look up at the sky, up at the wavering gray sun and then past it, imagining I can see 2011GV1 in its current location. It’s close now, a couple million miles now, our nearest neighbor. They say that for the last couple of nights you’ll be able to see it with the naked eye, a new star, a gold pin in the black heavens. They say that just before impact the sky will brighten ferociously, like the sun has burst from its own skin, and then we will feel it, even on the far side of the Earth we will feel it, the whole world will quaver from the blow. They say that sufficient debris will be ejected from the impact site to fill Earth’s atmosphere in a matter of hours.

  I stand up, stumble away, and then I grab my forehead with both hands and slowly claw my fingers down my face: dig into my eyes, gouge my cheeks, burrow my fingers through my ridiculous policeman’s mustache, disfigure my lips and my mouth, tear a
ngry furrows into my chin. Birds are chattering to each other in a nearby tree. Lily, the girl, whatever her name is, she’s still on the outskirts of the clearing, sobbing wordlessly, a dissonant ghostly moan.

  Go on now, Detective, urges Detective Culverson, comforting but firm. Go on and get to work.

  I turn back around and step close again, give myself a push and look at the body like any other body, the crime scene like any other crime scene.

  Her throat is cut, the same as Lily’s. Her face is covered with scratches and slight bruising, the same as Lily’s. And her hair: a hunk is missing from the back, from just above the nape of the neck. She’s had bad haircuts in recent years—punkish, short, choppy—so it’s hard to tell. But I think it was hacked off. I shake my head, run my hand through my own short hair. I demand a summary of findings and it comes back in the voice of Dr. Alice Fenton, chief medical examiner of the state of New Hampshire, another old acquaintance: We have a Caucasian female, twenty-one years old, signs of struggle including incised wounds to the fingers, palms, and forearms; cause of death is massive blood loss from traumatic laceration to the structures of the throat, inflicted with a knife or other sharp object wielded by a determined assailant.

  I bite my lip. I look at her face, her closed eyes. What else?

  This clearing is smaller than the one where we found the first victim, the one who survived. The ravine where we found her was neat and circular, encircled by pines. This place is rougher around its edges, smaller and more irregular, surrounded not by forest trees but low ugly bushes, rough with pricklers and brambles.

  The same evidentiary challenges, here, though, the same unuseful ground, thick with mud. Footprinting a lost cause.

  I stand up again. My head spins with stars. I walk a tight circle. What else?

  Slow down, Palace, says Detective Culverson, slow down, says Officer McConnell, and I tell my ghosts to hush up now, tell them to be still a minute because I can’t slow down, I won’t—there’s no time.