by Abby Geni
THE WILDLANDS
ALSO BY ABBY GENI
The Lightkeepers
The Last Animal
THE WILDLANDS
Copyright © 2018 by Abby Geni
First hardcover edition: 2018
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Geni, Abby, author.
Title: The wildlands : a novel / Abby Geni.
Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008262 | ISBN 9781619022348 | eISBN 9781619022829
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.E545 W55 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008262
Jacket designed by Nicole Caputo
Book designed by Wah-Ming Chang
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For my parents
THE WILDLANDS
PROLOGUE
I never heard the siren. I slept through the rising wind and the tree branches wrenching loose and colliding with the roof. I did not catch the sound of the cows lowing in the back field or the horses stamping anxiously. I was taking a nap. It was late afternoon on a Saturday in spring, so many years ago.
By the time my sister woke me, the sky had turned green. That was the first thing I noticed, blinking and yawning, still dewy with sleep. Darlene threw off my blankets. I was only six years old then, still young enough to be slung over my sister’s shoulder and carried down the hallway at a trot. Bouncing on her back, I glanced out the window and saw the Oklahoma sky soaked with a new color. Damp jade. Split pea soup. Moss on stone.
Darlene set me down on the couch and dashed upstairs again. I sat dazed for a moment. There was turmoil both inside the house and out. My whole family seemed to be in motion, a babel of footsteps and voices. All the lights were lit. It was raining, but not in any way I recognized. The drizzle came in lashing, inconsistent bursts, tonguing the window, splattering a door, then subsiding into an eerie silence. My father hurried past me at a breathless jog, his belly bouncing. He was holding a box that clanked with each step as he lumbered down the stairs into the basement.
I got to my feet and went to the window, pushing the curtains aside. The breeze was laden with flecks of white and brown—papers and leaves and trash. The wind seemed to be picking things up and putting them down again like a child selecting a toy to play with. I tried to gather my wits. From the upper floor, voices filtered down, high and shrill. Tucker and Jane were shouting. From what I could tell, they were agreeing with one another, albeit angrily.
A mosaic of raindrops dusted the glass. I saw the big oak tree bow as though in prayer. A bird whizzed past the window, flying backward. I nearly laughed at the sight—the beak pointed in the wrong direction, neck extended, every muscle straining. It could not make the slightest bit of headway; it could not even turn itself the right way around. Its feathers were rumpled, sticking up at sharp angles, its beak agape. The breeze swept it rearward, borne away on the current like a twig in rapids.
Daddy reemerged from the basement, his face waxen and speckled with sweat. He checked his watch and roared at the top of his lungs, “Two minutes! Not one second more!”
He pounded out the back door, slamming it hard enough to shake the house. Then there was stillness. For a moment, I could hear nothing but the wind.
I laid a hand on the glass. The sky was darkening as though someone had spilled ink into the clouds. Our lawn chairs were piled in an untidy heap by the fence. The yard did not look like the place where I had played yesterday. It was strewn with plastic bags and dirty papers, other people’s refuse. Tree branches dotted the grass, and my toys were gone—no hula hoop, no Frisbee, no tennis racket. Shimmering veils of rain hid the barn and the cow paddock.
Our land sprawled across several acres. I squinted through the drizzle, trying to find order in a jumble of droplets and debris. The trees were no help, swaying ominously, blocking my view, their trunks groaning from the exertion. In the distance, the cows were lying down—silvery shapes in the wet grass. This was worrisome. I knew a lot about cows; I had walked among them, patting their meaty necks, listening to their chewing, their tails swishing the flies away, their eyes tracking my every move. I had offered them bunches of grass, keeping my palm flat to avoid their massive teeth. Their breath was always milky and hot, their tongues as rough as sandpaper. They spent their days pacing the field, communicating with one another in bellows. They lay down only when things were bad—not enough water, too much heat, a bewildering storm.
I could not see the rest of the animals. The horses were probably safe in the barn. We had three: an old gray stallion, a moody mare, and a pony with a bronze coat and a joyful temperament. Most afternoons the colt could be found cantering in the grass, kicking his legs high and twisting his thin torso into jaunty leaps, as though with a little effort he could undo the binds of gravity and gallop away on the wind. My brother was particularly good with the horses. Tucker had a way of whispering to them, coming close and stroking their flanks. They would grow still, ears cocked forward as though absorbing his words intently, nuzzling against him, their breath commingled with his.
At that moment, Darlene bounded downstairs. She was flushed, and her bangs were disheveled, rising off her forehead like steam. She darted around the living room, collecting the photographs of our mother. There were half a dozen displayed in nice frames. On the mantel, Mama stood backlit against the sun in a field of flowers. On the coffee table, Mama sat astride our gray stallion, pointing at the camera and laughing. On the end table, Mama posed in an unknown forest with an unknown black dog at her side. Darlene piled all the picture frames in her arms. I opened my mouth to ask her a question, but she was already gone, heading for the basement.
I turned back to the window. Thirty feet away, a lone calf darted into view, dashing out from behind a tree and disappearing into a clot of bushes. There were a few new calves among the herd; I wondered which one this might be. I wondered how the chickens were faring in their cramped coop. I wondered where our little goat—shy, skittish, with fur like pulled cotton—had found shelter.
A hand fell on my nape. My brother was standing beside me.
“The sky is green,” I said.
“I know.”
“The cows are acting worried.”
Tucker knelt down, his eyes level with mine. He was seventeen, wiry and muscular, every movement lush with intention and grace. His curly hair was tugged back in a ponytail. He put one hand on each of my shoulders.
“Do you understand what’s happening?” he said.
“No.”
“Remember the tornado shelter in the basement?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going there now,” he said.
Then I heard a scream—panicked and unearthly, carried on the breeze. Tucker and I both checked, staring outside. The wail went on and on, fretful, wrenching. I tilted my
head, trying to locate the source of the sound.
“It’s the horses,” Tucker said.
“What?”
“They’re in the barn. I put them there—” He broke off, frowning. “It was only supposed to be a thunderstorm. There wasn’t anything on the news about a tornado until a couple minutes ago. I told Daddy—”
He trailed off again. His face was pale except for a bright triangle of pink on each cheek.
In the distance, the horses were still screaming. There was an anonymous quality, I realized, to the sound of a frightened animal. The intensity of the cry washed out all the usual characteristics of species, size, and kind. It might have been women sobbing, or birds squawking, or coyotes baying.
There was a scuffle behind us, and Jane appeared. She came down the stairs with a bulging bag slung over her shoulder. Jane was tall for her eleven years, a stocky athlete with a river of blond braid. Usually she was steady and composed, but today her forehead was furrowed, her arms shaking visibly beneath the weight of her burden. Even her hair seemed upset, flicking around her face in golden shards.
“Get over here,” she spat out. “Help me!”
Tucker jumped to obey. Jane lost her footing, almost falling down the remaining stairs, but he caught her elbow in time. Working together, they hefted her bag into an awkward position, balanced between the two of them, and began to waddle toward the basement. I heard a door open, and their voices dwindled away.
I leaned closer to the window. The sun umbrella stood on the deck, rocking. In bad weather, my father usually folded and tied it shut. On balmy days, it would flare open, a faded tent of red and yellow, its rod weathered by the years into an indifferent black. Daddy had forgotten to furl it today. Perhaps there had not been enough warning. Before my eyes, the umbrella started to turn, pivoting on the spot, the panels of color flashing. The stand bounced, clanging against the deck. It jumped once, twice, then floated straight into the sky, rising like a UFO. I watched it go, my mouth pooling open, hands tangled together as I tried to understand.
I knew what a tornado was, of course. I lived in Oklahoma; I had heard the warnings all my life. Our small town, Mercy, sat smack in the middle of Tornado Alley. I had helped my father stock the bunker in our basement with canned goods and batteries. I had listened to his lectures about what made a strong, sturdy shelter—completely underground, the walls solid concrete, at least one foot thick. I had taken part in tornado drills at school, crouching against the wall with a line of other children, all of us hot, squirmy, and bored, waiting for the teacher to blow her whistle and tell us it was over, that the imaginary threat was gone.
But none of these experiences had prepared me for what was happening now. The roar picked up. A blur of fabric whizzed past the window—a shirt, maybe, torn from someone’s clothesline. The air was a quilt of flying detritus. The horses had stopped screaming, or else their voices were lost in the wind.
Out in the back field, the cows began climbing to their feet. As I watched, the herd orbited the paddock in a bewildered shuffle, the calves trailing at the rear. In the manner of their kind, they operated as a single organism; none was in charge, all fired by a shared idea, prey animals overcome by the instinct to flee. They jogged in unison, bulky bodies skimming against one another, shoulders working, moving faster with each revolution until they were pelting flat out. There was nowhere for them to go, but they ran anyway.
The cloud layer began to change shape. I saw movement, a wriggle, one tuft curling away from the rest. A smoky finger arched and distended downward. There was a flash of something bright in the corner of the sky. I wondered if it was our sun umbrella, miles up, waving goodbye. A bird soared past the window, this one upside-down. Near the horizon, a hole had opened up in the silken pouch of the clouds. Ash poured toward the ground. A gray pillar. Almost dancing.
It seemed like a magic trick—the tornado willing itself into being out of empty air. The wind took on a new noise, a kind of pattern, regular in its pulsing, loud enough to sting my ears. The funnel cloud flowed downward with the certainty of water. It appeared to be finding its way through a riverbed in the air, a pathway imperceptible to the human eye, swaying, trickling in a new direction, unhurried and inexorable in its progress. Just above the horizon, it paused, hovering.
I never saw it touch down. At that instant, rough hands yanked me away. Tucker carried me like a football. I cried out, but he did not notice, running toward the basement stairs.
The others were there too, my whole family moving in formation. Cradled against Tucker’s shoulder, I saw Darlene behind me, eyes wide, mouth open in what looked like a silent yell. Jane jogged with a soldierly determination. She was dressed strangely—an old pair of jeans with paint on the knee, her shirt on backward, only one sock. I noticed that her hair was wet. Maybe she had been in the shower when the cry had gone up and she had thrown on whatever was closest to hand.
We wheeled downstairs like birds on the wing. I tried to resettle myself in Tucker’s arms, but his biceps and wrists made a fierce vise. I could not shift position; I could not make a sound. The basement was dark and mildewed, hung with spiderwebs. There were storage bins, an old refrigerator that did not work, and Mama’s bicycle, dusty with disuse, both wheels deflated. Daddy’s workbench took up half of the space: his toolbox, hacksaw, and the woodworking projects he loved so dearly, though they rarely came to anything. A board leaned against the wall, bejeweled with bent nails. A half-completed dollhouse for Jane had stood on the countertop for as long as I could remember, its rooms mismatched in size, the whole structure leaning ominously to one side. Jane had outgrown playing with dolls in the time our father had been assembling that thing.
Tucker reached the shelter first, with Darlene a step behind. My brother pushed me inside. Something struck my temple, and a firework exploded behind my eyes. I found myself on a bench in the dark, my head ringing. I appeared to have whacked my skull on a shelf of canned goods. Everyone was yelling. Darlene was doing a head count, saying our names over and over like a nursery rhyme: “Tucker, Jane, and Cora. Tucker, Jane, and Cora.” My brother was trying to find the light switch, narrating his progress aloud: “To the left—hang on—” Jane’s cold hands wrapped around me as though I were a security blanket.
The light came on. Dingy walls. Low ceiling. Rows of boxes and bottles of water. Tucker shut the door, and the world went quiet. The space was small and cluttered, the shelves casting deep shadows. In the center of the room, Darlene spread her arms, reaching for all of us as though it was not enough to see us with her own eyes; she needed the verification of physical contact.
My father was not there.
It took us all a moment to realize it. I was still getting the lay of the land: Jane’s duffel bag crammed in a corner, framed photos of Mama stacked on the floor, Tucker’s cell phone and charger on the bench beside me. I could smell sweat and perfume and the peculiar, coppery musk of the storm.
“Where is he?” Darlene said.
“I’ll go,” Tucker said.
He began to fumble with the knob. Darlene reacted so fast that I almost couldn’t follow it. In a heartbeat, she had batted my brother’s hand away and planted herself with her back against the door, her arms braced outward.
“Nobody leaves,” she said.
“For god’s sake,” Tucker said. “Daddy could be—”
“No,” Darlene cried. “He’ll be here in a second. Any second.”
“What if he—”
“There’s nothing we can do,” she said.
Her lips were drawn back in a snarl, catlike and feral. Tucker took a step toward her. In response, she flattened her body against the door. Her feet were dug in, her neck taut, her hands splayed like suction cups.
“Daddy could be hurt,” Tucker said softly. “He could need help.”
“I know that,” she said.
“Please.”
She ground her palm into the corner of one eye, but she st
ayed where she was. The bare bulb flickered overhead. Jane was holding me so tightly that she had pulled me halfway onto her lap. In the middle of the room, Tucker hovered uncertainly. His expression was defiant, but his posture suggested that he had given up the fight. Darlene was the oldest, after all. My brother kicked aimlessly at the floor, then slung himself onto a bench with an adolescent flounce.
I tried to picture where my father might be. At the barn, maybe. Soothing the horses. Making sure the chickens were latched securely in their coop. Trying to stop the cows from running themselves into exhaustion, as they had done once before when a coyote broke into their paddock. I was waiting for Daddy’s knock. If I shut my eyes tight, he would knock. If I held my breath. Any second now.
Something wrenched loose above us. It sounded like wood breaking. I wondered if my father was up there rearranging the furniture. Something skidded and slid, a gritty, painful scraping. I had the confusing sensation of being near a train track, listening to the rhythmic rattle of the wheels.
Only a few minutes had gone by before I heard the rain. It was a gentle tapping right above us. For a moment, I was soothed by the sound.
This is my first memory. This day, this storm, the calamity that set everything in motion, all the strange and terrible things to come. Huddled in the bunker. Jane’s hands in mine. Photos of my mother in the corner, the frames now cracked. My father’s absence. I was picturing him with all my might, as though somehow I could conjure him into being—his paunch, his crooked smile, his wide shoulders. Above my head, the drizzle picked up. I did not understand what it meant. I did not know why Tucker buried his head in his hands and Darlene went boneless, slumping to the floor. It did not occur to me that I should not have been able to hear rainfall in the basement. I leaned against Jane and listened to the soft pattering. Six years old, still filled with hope, not realizing that my father and the house above us, the farm and all our animals, were gone.
