I didn’t want to look for Rosalie. My gut kept saying Fuck Rosalie. She didn’t see you, so who gives a shit? I just wanted to get my ass out of there. I wanted to get home and shower for a day. Maybe I’d give Sativa sixty bucks so she’d stick her ass in the air. Maybe she’d offer it up for free. Maybe I’d just take my piece. Pretty sure I’d earned it. End of the day, I just didn’t want to see what else might be waiting between me and Rosalie.
I had to be sure, though. Much as I hated it, I had to fucking be sure.
8
I tried not to look as I stepped over Marta. The way she was spread across the carpet made it hard, though. Her blood looked black against the soaked fiber. It had already started thickening, and now it looked like molasses on a stovetop. That couldn’t be right, but I didn’t see a point in hanging around to give the stuff a closer look.
A kitchen stood just off the living room. A single bare bulb cast an ugly glare over cracked linoleum and counters that looked ready to crumble. The pasty substance covered the walls in here, too. It crept off the walls to cling to the counters. It spread across the floor like a disease.
The room smelled like bad meat. I thought maybe all the blood was fucking with my senses, but then I saw the flies. A cloud of them whirled over the filthy stovetop. They hovered over a pot that had been left on one of the burners. I took a single step toward the pot, and the stink got worse.
I decided I didn’t need to see what was rotting on the stove. I had to find Rosalie, and I figured she wasn’t in the stinking cookware. Hell, if she was cooking on the stove that just left me off the hook. I wasn’t about to check, though.
I found a narrow hallway and started down it. My shoulder brushed the wall, and a portion of the yellowed crud smeared across my shirt. I kept my gut in check and continued. If I was lucky, the stuff wouldn’t eat through and start working on my shoulder.
Halfway down, I found a door I figured belonged to a bathroom. That stuff had sealed it shut, and I didn’t want to touch anything just to get that door open. Maybe if I didn’t find Rosalie in another room, but that was a pretty big if.
Another door marked the end of the hallway. As I inched closer to it, I wondered what the fuck I was doing. Maybe I was sobering up a little. I wondered if Sativa was really worth all this. Maybe I could just run. That was probably the smart play. Get the fuck out, boot Sativa to the curb, and get home before sunrise. Tomorrow I could continue my life like nothing had happened.
I shook my head. I knew the truth. I couldn’t leave Sativa. I was in love with her, and she needed me. I was freeing her from this bullshit life, and come tomorrow we’d have a life of our own.
I kicked open the bedroom door. I heard frightened movement, and I knew I’d found Rosalie. My brain screamed to turn and run, but I was already through the door. Running wasn’t an option anymore. I wished it was.
Rosalie might have been a little girl once. She sure as hell wasn’t now. I could see bits and pieces of the girl: the greasy strings of black hair hanging limp from her scalp, patches of dark skin on her back and legs. When she looked at me, I could make out the part of her face that hadn’t split open. Her left eye was almost human, and it looked more than a little scared.
Or maybe I just saw my reflection.
My wasp nest idea hadn’t been far off. The buzzing wings on Rosalie’s back and the dripping stinger told me as much. One of her insect legs still had a long tatter of human skin hanging from it.
Her wings fluttered again—beating out an echoing rhythm—and then they began to accelerate. I looked to the lance that jutted from her torso and saw a thick stream of yellow liquid dribble to the floor. She opened her mouth, and a hum appeared in the center of my head and then vibrated outwards. Pain lanced my teeth, my skull. I dropped to my knees, but I kept the shotgun up and ready.
Rosalie pushed off the wall. I pulled both triggers and cut her in half.
I’m not sure how I managed to reach my feet. I know every hammering thud of my heart came close to dropping me again. I staggered out of that freak show of a bedroom. Terrible thoughts poked at me as I stumbled down the hallway. I thought about the white film on Abel’s naked body, and that really kicked my ass in gear. I needed out of the apartment now.
A wet sound greeted me in the living room. I didn’t want to find its source but then I saw Marta’s belly swell and fall, and noticed the movement of something trying to dig its way free.
I leaped over her corpse and ran from the apartment. I never even checked to see if anybody saw me. I just wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get back to Sativa.
9
She didn’t say anything at first. That cut a little. I hoped she’d miss me. I expected her to thank me. Instead she just stared out the windshield with a look like stone on her face. I drove a few blocks, checking her expression and the rearview. Both stayed empty.
Maybe one relieved me, but the other pissed me off a little. I’d just risked my goddamn life for her. I’d walked into a freak show and been shot at for her. I’d blasted something that used to be a little girl for her, and she wasn’t saying a goddamn thing.
I pulled my truck into an alley the color of a rotten asshole and threw sixty bucks in Sativa’s lap before I showed her what’s what. She didn’t call me the big man this time. Didn’t say anything. I hiked my jeans back up and got the truck rolling again.
She finally spoke about halfway home.
“You killed them.”
I breathed deep before saying, “Yeah.”
“Bastard.”
“You’re in shock. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“You said you wouldn’t hurt them.”
“I didn’t know they were freaks.”
“Abel keep us safe.”
“Looked to be doing a bang up job, too.”
“What you know?”
“I know he had you working on the street. I know he had you bent over or on your knees so you could bring him cash.”
“My idea.”
“Like hell.”
“It was. You know nothing. Abel protect us from Him. Keep Him away.”
“Him who?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Well, I can protect you.”
“Maybe.”
“Yes.”
“I hope so. I really do.”
She shrugged, and I wanted to hit her. I squashed the urge and kept driving. My thick fists choked the steering wheel. I couldn’t hit Sativa. One look at her sealed the deal for me. I loved her, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to fix that.
I pulled the truck up to my trailer and carried her across the threshold. She didn’t appear to mind.
10
We twisted on top of the sheets a few times, and some of the old Sativa came back. She called me Papi and told me I was the big man again. She worked her tongue past my lips and kissed me like I was her first. Her back arched, and she screamed like one of those porno girls. It was nice.
She’d made me push a chair under the doorknob, and she asked me to drop the blinds and close them. I didn’t get it, but I figured she wanted her privacy. Why not? She had a new life now. She didn’t need people watching while she had her fun.
I lay on my back and held her close. She looked sad and maybe a little scared. I told her it was okay. I’d protect her from now on. She nodded like somebody caught up in a TV show, just trying to look like she was paying attention.
I tried to talk to her. I wanted to find out what was wrong, but she distracted me. She slid down my body and took me into her mouth. She worked me fast and slow. I groaned, and the trailer melted around me.
Sativa said something in the moments between when I erupted and when I fell asleep. I couldn’t make it out, but it sounded important.
11
I woke up when something thunked against the trailer’s roof with an impact like a meteor. Sativa screamed in my arms. She thrashed beside me, and I had to fight to hold her still. Her elbow crac
ked one of my teeth loose.
I heard a sound like a diesel engine. It surrounded the trailer and worked its way into my brain. I thought about Rosalie’s wings accelerating. The noise burned in my skull like fire. It vibrated my teeth. Somewhere beyond it all, I heard something puncture the trailer’s roof like a spear.
I groped under my pillow for the .45 I keep there. I checked the clip and found it full. I gave Sativa a look and wondered if I really would die for her.
I thought about that moment between eruption and sleep, and I understood what she’d said.
I’m pregnant.
There are things in the mud with us. When I’m not numb from the cold that seeps through the meat of me and turns my bones to ice, I feel them squirm past my hands. Sometimes, I try to grab one, but they always disappear just as my fingers close around them.
Maybe they’re ghosts.
No one believes me, but then again I don’t expect them to. Just like the others, I’m a liar and a thief and a criminal, sentenced to plow through Work Pit Four’s mud with my fingers, my sentence for stealing a coat and hat, the garments stained with soot from London’s new factories.
“Collins!” a voice shouts with the volume of a pistol shot. “Fuckin’ work, you!”
My beard, too matted and sopping to be scraggly, weighs at my face as I bend forward and explore the mud with my fingers once more.
Something slips past my hands, and I want to weep.
Denham’s skin is turning to stone. He hasn’t noticed it yet, but I spotted the changes almost a week ago, when I took a break from whispering to the ghosts in the mud, asking them to aid me in some stupid dash for freedom. With little else to do in this wet pit, I make it a habit to observe everything I can. Maybe one day it will help me escape, but I find this doubtful. One doesn’t need glasses to see the ring of armed men at the pit’s edge.
Denham’s skin has been gray for months, stained with filth and the shadow of cloudy skies. The rest of us look similar, but he moves slower than we do. He is old, fifty years or more, and still working off a sentence for stealing a goose. Ten years already, and at least another ten to go. I think his glacial pace is the reason his skin’s begun to turn.
Now and then, he mutters that his joints feel stiff, but I can hear the stone crumble as he moves, can see it crack along his elbows and shoulders and knees. Every day, he moves slower than the last. One day soon, he’ll stop moving, and then he’ll just be a statue in the mud.
Because of a goose.
Sometimes, when we are bunched close enough to each other to whisper without fear of the whip or some other form of discipline, we discuss what on God’s Green we could possibly be digging for in Work Pit Four. There has to be something. At the very least, there must be some reason, some goal. Surely, the government isn’t desperate for a deeper mud hole.
Werner, one of the younger men, thinks we’re meant to bury something. A siege engine or some other strange, secret weapon, he insists. Others believe it is our goal to hide riches of some sort, but I find that idea ridiculous. The best of us are thieves, and we are not to be trusted with anything of value. If nothing else, the government knows this.
No, it is my belief that we are digging up something, and as I feel things slither around my wrists and hear Denham’s flesh crack and crumble and see something that looks like honey drain from Werner’s eyes and ears and mouth, I decide that whatever it is we are meant to find must be something terrible.
The guards shot one of their own this morning. More to the point, one of the guards turned on the rest. The man, a chubby brute with a face like a pig’s, was shouting orders and laughing at our labors, when suddenly he stood ramrod straight, jammed the stock of his musket into his shoulder, and planted a ball in the face of the man next to him.
Shouts like the frightened bleating of farm animals rose up from the ring of coated men as the wounded guard tumbled into Work Pit Four, splashing in the mud. His body continued to kick and thrash as his murderer leapt for the next man in line. Shrieking, the pig-faced savage dug his thumbs into the man’s eyes. Those of us in the pit shrank away, all of us but Denham, who remained bent in half and wheezing, eyes staring at the body twisting before him.
The remaining guards made no attempt at saving their comrade. Instead, they simply lifted their muskets and fired. Gun smoke stung at my nose as the murderer and his second victim fell silent and then crumpled to the soft ground.
The guards kicked them in with us and told us to get back to it.
We did.
They can’t be ghosts, because they’ve dug into my arms. I can feel them now, wriggling deeper every second.
The rain pelts down tiny daggers against my raw skin, and I grit my teeth as I scoop fresh handfuls of cold mud into the wooden bucket at my feet. A dozen paces away, the statue Denham has become lies discarded in the muck, and beyond the stone man moans Werner, now half his size and still melting into the pit. Yes, it is honey. I know the scent.
“Keep digging!” a voice commands.
Our boss wants us to find something. I’m sure of it now. What he doesn’t know is that I have it, that my hand first touched its strange contours only a few seconds ago. The things deep in my arms, moving toward my heart, whisper as I trace my fingers over what must be a skull, examining the strange, ridged forehead and exploring numerous empty eye sockets. They tell me what to do, how to harness the skull’s power, and as I grab hold of the monstrous bone with both hands, I share a final glance with Werner.
“Goodbye,” he says in a wet voice.
I yank the skull free and lift it to the sky.
Table of Contents
Just Like Hell
A Team-Building Exercise
Miss Kenner and Me
S
Work Pit Four
Just Like Hell Page 9
