by 19
You're all crazy. I can't believe this is happening. You're all crazy.
He stopped his story, crying too hard to speak. He was sitting up now. Jordan tried to put his arms around him, worried and somehow small beside him. He pushed Jordan away, cried by himself until he was finished, staring up at the icy stars, staring up at Orion.
He sniffed, swallowed hard, scrubbed his hand over his face when it was over. He glanced back towards the fire to make sure Zillah wasn't paying attention, feeling that for Zillah to see him in this weakness would be an irreparable thing.
He drew in a deep breath. His lungs hitched. He took another breath and started over.
When he woke up, he was alone. The cars were gone, the crowd was gone. He was lying on the ground soaked with dew. He had a headache so vast it had spread throughout his body. Every joint was filled with broken glass. Big, jagged chunks of it.
He sat up like a rusted android, biting back a groan. There were dead leaves in his hair. His mouth was filled with the taste of rotting fruit.
He spit twice, and just managed to push himself up on his knees before the retching started. He vomited violet shards of something he didn't remember eating, knelt up shaking and wiped his mouth with the bottom of his shirt. The smell of whatever Lucretia had rubbed on him set him off again. Finally he stood up and staggered away from the mess, making a silly small noise of misery.
He heard something in the woods, a few yards away. He stood staring out into the darkness, scared for an unknown reason. –Lucretia?
A faint moan. The vegetable crackle of leaves and twigs.
He knew what it was, then. He broke into a clumsy hung-over run. –I'm coming. It's all right. I hear you, hang on, he yelled.
When he reached the boy he almost stepped on him. They had thrown dirt and leaves and debris over him. His face was so filthy that he had probably been digging himself out of a shallow hurried grave.
He grabbed the boy under his arms and dragged him out of the earth. The boy cried out, flailed with his arms, his legs, sending both of them to the ground in an overbalanced tangle.
He sat up, half-holding the boy in his lap, tried to help him wipe the dirt off his face, out of his mouth. The boy was fighting him still. –It's okay. I'm not one of them, I'm trying to help you. It's okay.
The boy was not okay. He was bleeding, and incoherent, muttering things about goats, sobbing over angels with pointed teeth. When he realized he was no longer buried he shrieked and began to struggle to reach the ground again.
He finally dragged the boy to his feet and forced him to walk. The sky was getting lighter, and he went north, back into Haven.
(5)
–And they arrested me for participating in witchcraft and sodomy, he finished.
He didn't tell Jordan the scary part.
On the way back the boy had stopped breathing, and his heart had stopped beating. He had done a thing he had sworn to never do again, and made him live. Forced him to. Forbade him to die, more or less.
Flash: his hands on the boy's chest, over his limp still heart, and death like a wet black veil between them. He was screaming, don't, don't you dare, tearing and pulling and tearing with a power he didn't understand.
He closed his eyes, trying to fold up the images until they were too small to see.
Jordan was silent.
It was awkward. He sat up and groped in his pocket for he didn’t know what, drugs probably. Jordan handed him the canteen again. He drank the rest of it.
–They didn't arrest anyone else? Jordan asked, finally.
He snorted at that one. –Why would they? They had their scapegoat. A skinny weird drifter with long black hair who never showed up in that pressed-wood church with the out-of-tune piano.
–You're not a drifter, Jordan protested. –We're on a quest.
–Oh, yeah. I forgot that part.
He had found a twist of cocaine in his pocket and was toying with it, vaguely trying to figure out a way to do it with the wind blowing and not much of a horizontal surface. The dashboard? If he rolled up the windows? He'd have to contort to manage that. Maybe one of his books. Ha. Doing coke off of the cover of Magick in Theory and Practice. Or the Necronomicon.
–Is there a safehouse near here? he asked Jordan. They couldn't stay in the desert much longer. They would need food, a place to sleep that didn't have anything to do with sleeping bags. A shower. He made an inadvertent little sound of longing.
Jordan grinned. –That's the surprise. A really really good friend of mine has one about a day from here. His name is Spectre. I dreamed about him two days ago so he probably knows we're coming.
That was Jordan for you. He smiled. He wasn't any better, with his crazy little flashes. He didn't read much about that kind of thing happening before the war. Now, it was fairly common, even though those who were gifted tended to keep it quiet. He wondered if the biochemical weapons had anything to do with it. –Is Spectre good people?
–Yeah. He's like us. He's even more psychic than you, I think, except in a different way. He knows about ghosts and when it's going to rain and stuff.
–What does he need?
That was the system. Safehouses were anything from storage sheds to houses to shacks to abandoned bomb shelters, owned and operated by those who quietly opposed the theocracy. In return for providing shelter and whatever comfort was available, anyone who took refuge there gave back whatever they could–drugs, labor, stories, anything.
–He wants you to tell about the thing we're looking for, Jordan said promptly.
He sighed. He should have known. –Couldn't he take some of the stuff from Haven? There's the opium.
–He mostly uses weed, and he grows his own. And he gets LSD from some guy. He doesn't use much else. It's just a story. Come on. He wants to hear it.
He sighed. –We should all get to sleep. We can leave together tomorrow. I'll put that deathbike in the back.
If you sit in the middle, he added to himself.
Zillah had spent their conversation setting up an idiotic looking sort of a tent, using four stakes and a square tarp that was about ten by ten feet. It was only about four feet off the ground, with the tarp folded over on two adjoining sides to make a vinyl wall. He had arranged the sleeping bags underneath. –I figured this might keep the worst of the sand off, he said, still staring into the campfire and smoking.
He caught the scent, and shuddered. A clove. It reminded him of Lucretia.
–Oh, cool, Jordan said, delighted. He crawled underneath immediately, damn near collapsing the entire structure.
He stared at the contraption, sighing mentally. He didn't want to crawl under this thing like an idiot camping on the beach. He didn't want to spend the night sleeping there, listening to their breathing. He was too tired to argue about it, and too irritated to ignore it.
He climbed under the tarp beside Jordan, his back, head and jaw aching. He dragged his sleeping bag–sleek, waterproof, stuffed with thick feathers, lined with thick plaid cotton. He looked at the battered army-surplus ragged thing Jordan was using as a sleeping bag, and whispered, –Trade me? I think I'm allergic to mine. It itches me.
Jordan was not buying this at all. –You don't want this one. It sucks.
–I just want to trade you, he said. His sleeping bag was about six feet across, zipped closed. Jordan's was obviously only intended to be a single occupancy model.
–No, you don't. You want me to have yours because yours doesn't suck. You're just doing that thing you always do.
He gave up on diplomacy. He threw his sleeping bag towards Jordan and snatched the army bag. Jordan put up a brief struggle, using tickling, poking, light smacking, and two word protests as his primary weapons.
He finally got tired of the game and shoved Jordan hard enough to seriously endanger the tent. The battle ended when he had cocooned himself in the olive green bag and refused to let go.
Jordan spread the new bag on the opposite side of the tent. –Jerk, he mu
ttered. His voice was too soft, happy, but sad.
–I'm trying to sleep, he muttered, laying on the irritation too thickly to be convincing.
–Well, good night, then, Jordan told him, in that silly prissy Sunday-school teacher voice that always cracked him up.
He grinned in spite of himself. –Night.
He drifted into an uneasy sleep, got caught in a thin ragged dream. He was in a burned out cathedral, trying to comfort the ghost of Joan of Arc when something jolted him awake. He lay shaking with irrational adrenaline, feeling as though he had just escaped falling from a cliff.
He was still covered up. There weren't any large evil insects around him. Maybe the dream had been what woke him. It hadn't seemed threatening or scary, only vague and sad.
Then he heard it again. The rustling of blankets, and the softer silken sound of skin against skin. A soft murmur that might have been words, or wordless.
He turned over so that his back was to Jordan and Zillah, wrapped his arms around his head. He pretended to still be sleeping, pretended not to hear. He was thinking ugly murderous thoughts, sharp mean thoughts about how it would be if Zillah were not there. He and Jordan would lie there telling stupid jokes and kicking each other. Jordan would keep inching closer until he was too sleepy to be sneaky and he would whine about being scared to sleep out in the open, and couldn't they sleep next to each other?
He would refuse, until he was too sleepy to be arrogant and he admitted he was a little scared out in the open too. They would spend the night curled up together, in the desert, in an abandoned building, in a parking lot somewhere. Anywhere. He would lie awake long after Jordan was asleep, sometimes daring to touch the wiry dreadlocks, smelling his skin, like a very young child underneath all the dirt.
They were not lovers. He had never even considered that idea. Jordan had kissed him once, while extremely drunk. He'd kissed him back politely and patted his shoulder. They'd never spoken of it since. They were family, or something. He had been the parent since he and Jordan met.
He hoped, a little bitterly, that they were comfortable. Jordan had been right. This sleeping bag did suck. It was like lying on a threadbare towel spread over a cold slab of marble.
He curled up tight, closed his eyes, and concentrated on sleeping, on not hearing, on not thinking. His last coherent thought was and if that bastard Zillah wasn't here, Jordan and I could have shared both sleeping bags.
Flash: he was fifteen, one of the few real memories he had before his adulthood. He was in a one-room schoolhouse in a nameless town. There was a weird kid sitting in the back with the slow learners–affectionately known as the retards. This kid was tall, skinny but big, with vast hands and vivid bones. He cried constantly, and the other kids made fun of him, called him stupid, freak, queer.
He went up to this strange fragile being, after school one day. –Hi.
–Leave me alone, the kid said, covering up most of his face. –Go away.
–I don't want to hurt you, he'd said. –I'm not like them.
The kid had looked up at him, sitting on the ground in the shade, from under a tangled thick mess of long black hair. –Promise?
–I promise. What's your name?
–Jordan, the kid told him, looking amazed and a little suspicious at being treated like a human being.
–Do you want to get out of here, Jordan?
–Sure. School's over.
–No, I mean here, like out of this town. Go out.
Jordan frowned. –Where would we go?
The story was there, without his knowledge, automatic words. –There's a place I've seen in dreams. A sanctuary. Where nobody is ever mean to anybody, and everybody is free. And I want to find it, only I don't want to go alone.
–I want to go there! I'm sick of mean. I'm sick of rules. I can't draw stuff here because the other kids take it and tear it up. And they hit me. I get in trouble if I hit back 'cause I'm bigger than them. Can I really go with you?
He nodded, and impulsively reached out and ruffled Jordan's mess of dirty hair.
–I'd like that.
Jordan took his hand, like a child, and let himself be pulled to his feet. –Where is it? Is it far?
–I don't know, he said. –We have to search for it. It's like a quest, I think.
–A quest for the Sanctuary, Jordan repeated, carefully, as though he were arranging this in his mind. He nodded. –When can we go?
He had looked around at the plywood town, at the other kids staring at them with pure Christian hatred of anything that didn't fit in. –Right now, he said. –Right fucking now.
–Right fucking now! Jordan parroted, joyfully, and too loudly, gaining them some muttering and even meaner stares. –Are we friends?
He nodded. He liked this childlike being. Jordan’s strange long bones were easy on his eyes, and those huge hands were gentle, almost shy. –Yes. We're friends.
–Forever?
He gritted his teeth at the thought of those empty-eyed other kids hurting this creature. –Forever.
–I never had a friend, I don't think. Jordan said, following him obediently. He scrunched up his face, deep in thought, and finally concluded, –If I did, I don't remember any.
–Me either, he said, smiling in spite of himself.
(6)
He woke up with Zillah whispering at him. –Shhh. Jordan's still sleeping.
–What do you want? he whispered back, half-afraid.
In answer, Zillah lifted his handcuffed wrist, and slipped a contorted piece of metal into the keyhole. The makeshift key scraped its way through a muffled series of grating clicks, and the handcuff snapped open.
He stared at it, not believing it, and said finally, –Thank you.
Zillah shrugged, and the handcuff struck the sand with a soundless thunk. –Bury it, he advised, already turning towards the dead ashes of the fire.
He rubbed his wrist, grateful and resenting it. –Why did you do that?
Zillah shrugged again, avoiding his eyes, covering the remains of the fire with handfuls of sand. –I've been in handcuffs before. It starts to hurt you, having to look at them, feel them.
–If you were with Jordan, why did you let him use a hacksaw when you could just pick the lock? he asked, before he realized how petty it sounded.
–Because I won't go in a jail. I can't, Zillah said flatly. –I've been in enough jails to last me the rest of my life.
He thought of the smell in his cell, of the words KILL ME scratched into the concrete, and nodded. He could understand that. He wasn't especially eager to see the inside of a jail again himself. –Well, thanks, he said again, lamely.
Zillah said nothing. He was packing up their belongings.
Jordan did in fact sit in the middle. He immediately began explaining where Spectre's safehouse was, in terms that were both cheerful and incoherent, punctuated by giggles. This was possibly due to the fact that his breakfast had been four Twinkies, a beer, and two lines of cocaine.
Zillah finally put his hand over Jordan's mouth. –Go due northwest. You'll see two big posts made of concrete about forty miles away. Ewww.
He interrupted himself to glare at Jordan, who had just licked his hand.
–When you see those, go straight west between them.
–How big? he asked, trying to start the truck and ignore Jordan's wiggling and indignant muffled complaints.
–You won't miss them. There's rocks and shit that keep you from going the wrong way. That's why we camped out here in the middle of nowhere.
The truck wheezed and swore and rattled like it was full of broken glass and bent nails, and finally surrendered. It started, puttered, and kept running. There was a compass stuck to the dashboard with wintergreen chewing gum. He pointed the hood ornament, a cross made out of scrap metal to fend off the cops, to northwest, and put it in drive.
Zillah took his hand off Jordan's mouth. –Love you, he said, peering out the dusty windshield.
–Fucker, Jordan muttered, and
giggled, ruining it.
He sighed. It was vaguely sickening, watching them. Not because of that, either. Because it made something cold and hard and selfish knot up in the pit of his stomach. No one will ever be like that with you. Not someone so weird, so funny-looking, so tall and skinny and hopeless.
–Do you have a cigarette? he asked Zillah. He didn't smoke. He wanted it to punish himself.
Zillah lit him one and handed it to him without a word. It scorched his throat, made his eyes water.
He gritted his teeth, smoked it anyway, ignored the voice, and drove.
The voice didn't take kindly to being ignored.
If only he wasn't so pretty. If only I could fucking understand how he could sleep on the ground in the fucking desert and not even look wrinkled. If only I could love Jordan. If only I could love anyone. If only I hadn't gone with that fucking bitch in the first place. This is what I get for thinking with my dick.
Most of it was like that, accusatory and illogical. He pretty much figured out that he was mad at himself, and not either of them. The problem was that kicking the shit out of himself was impossible, while kicking the shit out of one of them, preferably Zillah, was quite possible.
And he had an evil feeling it would make him feel a Hell of a lot better.
That bothered him most of all.
About noon, they executed a dangerous and embarrassing maneuver to switch drivers without actually stopping the truck. He had to climb over Zillah, and doing so without touching him was impossible. He ended up tasting Zillah's hair for a brief and excruciating instant, and he had to touch him twice, once on his leg over his knee, and once on his shoulder. His fingers remembered the texture of Zillah's collarbone long after he had taken his hand away. If Zillah noticed how badly it bothered him, he didn't let on.
