Breakdown

by Joseph Monninger

  “They’re not going to come through the walls after us,” Olivia said. “No way.”

  Preston didn’t know what to think. He still felt embarrassed about crying in front of Tock and Olivia earlier, but he couldn’t help it. Something inside felt tremulous and shaky. It was strange. If you had asked him who would be the most balanced, the most prepared to adapt to difficult conditions, he would have nominated himself. But things had gone differently. Things had felt different. Even now, squatting so that he could put his eye to his own little peephole in the debris wall, he felt nervous at the sight of the coyotes slinking through the understory. He felt if one swept close he might shriek like a little kid.

  He listened as a coyote made one of its bizarre, painful yelps. It sounded like a strangled cat. It was horrible. As soon as one coyote finished, a second one took up the call and twisted it even tighter. He saw a big gray coyote trot close to the edge of the lake. It stopped to drink quickly then continued onward.

  “I don’t know if I can sleep with them all around us,” Preston said, doing his best to keep his voice flat. “It’s eerie hearing them make sounds.”

  “If they decide to attack, they’ll come at us from all sides at once. That’s how they hunt,” Tock said. “Then they single out one animal and ambush it.”

  “So we stick together,” Olivia said. “No matter what.”

  “We should each pick a tree,” Tock said. “So that we can climb it if we have to. Look for low branches. A coyote can’t climb at all. They’re not like bears that way.”

  “I see my tree,” Olivia said.

  “Me, too,” Tock said.

  “Will you be able to climb with your leg? Or even make a run for it?” Olivia asked him.

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

  Preston didn’t see a tree that worked on his side of the debris hut. He felt a tiny nudge of panic enter his bloodstream. What if there wasn’t a third decent tree? That made no sense given how many trees surrounded them, but that’s how it felt. He tried again to get himself calmed down. What a raging wimp, he told himself, but that did no good. He saw a coyote flash between two trees. He hated how its animal body looked: all belly-heavy and stick-legged. It looked like walking hunger.

  “They’re not moving off,” Tock said. “That’s a little concerning.”

  “I can’t see a tree to climb,” Preston said.

  “Take anything, dude,” Tock said. “Don’t be choosy. Just find one you can get into fast in case these animals attack.”

  “They’re not going to attack!” Olivia said sharply. “Quit getting everyone stirred up, Tock.”

  But just then, a coyote left the cover of the forest understory and came toward the debris hut. It approached with only half its body; the other half remained poised to jump away at the least sign of threat. But it dipped its nose to the ground and made a breathy snuffling sound. Preston didn’t think it was a good sign.

  “They’re getting bolder, see?” Tock said. “You think I’m kidding you, Olivia, but I’m not. They can be wicked nasty animals.”

  “They’re not going to attack three healthy humans.”

  “I won’t say they will, and I won’t say they won’t,” Tock said. “But they’re not here for afternoon tea, you know?”

  Preston wished they would both shut up. He wished they were all home, all plopped down on a couch somewhere, maybe watching a Twins game, maybe eating a grape Popsicle. He ate a bunch of grape Popsicles during the summer. His mother kept them in the house, and she often said, “Why not have a Popsicle?” whenever anything got a bit strained in the house between her and her sometimes boyfriend, Harry. Things always felt better after a grape Popsicle, she said.

  “Should we do anything to let them know we’re not defenseless?” Preston asked. “You know, make some sort of show of strength?”

  He didn’t like how the single coyote had come forward and seemed intent on gauging the danger in the lump of debris that had suddenly appeared in their territory.

  “There’s nothing we can do if they decide to attack,” Tock said, lifting his eye away from his lookout hole. “Nothing except to take to the trees. I guess we could run to the house, but it’s far enough that they would probably catch us before we got there.”

  “I’m going to go out and pet one of these stupid things just so you’ll stop making them into a big deal,” Olivia said, turning and sitting down more comfortably in the center of the debris hut. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “They can come through these walls,” Tock said. “Don’t think they can’t.”

  “Oh, now it’s the big bad wolf and we’re three little pigs.”

  “In a stick house,” Tock said, his voice happy for a moment. “That’s my point. That’s exactly it.”

  Everything dripped. Preston heard a mosquito buzz near his right ear. He felt shaky again. He felt like crying. That was weird, weird, weird. He never cried, but now he felt an emotional wave sweep up along his body, straight from his toes. If he could have moved, he might have felt better, he reflected. Part of what drove him crazy was the sense of being trapped behind the porous walls.

  “I need to get out of here,” he said. “I’m feeling claustrophobic.”

  “It’s in your head,” Tock said.

  He sounded like the old, jerk Tock, Preston realized. The nicer, gentler Tock had been an illusion.

  “No, I really feel like I might explode,” Preston said. “Like I might go crazy if I can’t move around.”

  “It’s in your head,” Tock repeated.

  “It doesn’t help someone who is feeling something to tell them it’s all in their head,” Olivia said. “Everything is in everyone’s head. That’s the point.”

  A second coyote trotted up to the first coyote, the one closest to the debris hut. They sniffed each other quickly and then broke apart, each going in a different direction. Preston did not like the idea that they could be working as a team. He knew it was probable, but he did not like it. It made him feel sticky inside.

  “Maybe we should head to the house,” Preston said hopefully. “It’s not raining that hard anymore.”

  “I’m not going into the house with the raccoon,” Tock said.

  “I agree,” Olivia said. “We’re okay here.”

  Preston felt words choking him. He suddenly scrambled forward on his hands and knees and went through the tiny igloo door for the hut. He kept going, crawling, until he was well clear of the doorway. Then he stood. His breath came fast in his chest, and his arms felt tingly and unattached to his body. He looked up at the overcast sky. He couldn’t see anything but clouds. Darkness seemed to hold at the tips of the trees.

  “Preston, are you okay?” Olivia called. “You shot out of here.”

  “I’m okay,” Preston said, because he did feel better.

  He hated it in the debris hut, he decided. It made him feel buried.

  “Do you see the coyotes?” Tock asked.

  “I see them,” Preston said, turning to look in a circle around the hut. “I see them everywhere. They’re everywhere.”

  “How many?” Tock asked.

  But Preston couldn’t answer. Two coyotes walked slowly out of the underbrush toward him. Both had their heads down and their teeth bared. Both looked as thin as pencils.

  Simon listened to the walls around him.

  He often did that. Walls were more interesting than people knew. They contained more secrets than people suspected.

  Right now, for instance, he heard Devon, the caretaker, talking on the phone. The phone had been ringing and ringing, and Devon had spent most of the night talking on it. Apparently plenty of people wanted to talk to Devon, Simon reflected. The phone also rang for other people. Plenty of people had been in and out of the cafeteria all night. Simon had never heard so many radio squawks. Everyone seemed to be connected to various transmissions that popped in, made sounds like a hoarse crow calling out danger, then fled. And everyone wore boots. Big, heavy boots that made a no
ise in the flooring that passed eventually into the walls.

  Simon could hear plenty through the walls. He heard Quincy eating potato chips. First he heard the crinkle of a bag, then the grainy chuck of Quincy snapping his teeth through the chips. Quincy sounded like a horse, really, like a horse pulling up grass and mashing it before swallowing. The walls could tell you things like that.

  Simon felt sleepy. But sleep could not beat noise. It never could. Noise always beat sleep. That was the rule.

  His stomach rolled in a big, unhealthy wave. He put his palm flat on his belly’s surface. His stomach made another grinding sound, this time one that went on for a surprisingly long time.

  Simon pressed his palm down into his stomach. He didn’t want the sound to enter the walls.

  Then he heard Devon raise his voice.

  “Well, don’t blame me is all I’m saying! I didn’t have anything to do with it! I’m just here … Okay, yes, okay, sorry, but I don’t want this put at my doorstep, do you understand? This isn’t my fault.”

  Then he said something about a newspaper calling for information. And a television station. After listening awhile, he hung up. It was late, Simon knew. It was very late.

  Finally, sleep could win, because noise had disappeared. The camp became quiet, and Simon felt himself floating away. He always floated away at night. Everyone did, and they slept on their ceilings, only they didn’t know that. He slept on his ceiling every night, dropping sometimes like a yo-yo if noise came to wake him, then rising again, curling next to the light fixture, asleep with the world paused below him.

  Olivia heard Preston scream.

  It was a horrible sound. Immediately, she went on her hands and knees through the door of the debris hut. What she saw terrified her.

  The coyotes stood ten feet away from Preston. Both of them appeared ready to tear out Preston’s guts.

  “Easy,” she said. “Don’t make a move.”

  Tock came out beside her. They stood defenseless in the face of the coyotes. Tock could barely move.

  “Make yourself bigger,” Olivia said, remembering something her cousin had told her once. “Raise your hands up and lift your coat so that it looks crazy. Make it into a sail. They don’t like anything that looks different.”

  She watched Preston do as she had recommended. The coyotes retreated a step or two and glanced sideways.

  There are twenty coyotes here, Olivia realized, scanning the area in the near-darkness. Twenty at least.

  “We should get into the trees,” Tock said quietly. “They’re going to come at us. Look at them. They’re all over the place.”

  They were, Olivia saw. Except for the pair directly in front of Preston, it was difficult to gauge how many coyotes occupied the small wedge of land between the debris hut and the lake. Now and then, she caught a flash of their eyes. Their eyes frightened her.

  “I’m afraid to move,” Preston said, his voice shaky. “I feel like they’ll charge if I move.”

  “They’ll come from the side,” Tock said. “You won’t see the ones that come for you. The ones in front of you are simply holding you to a position while the others surround you.”

  “It doesn’t help to know that,” Preston said. “What should I do? I can’t stand like this forever.”

  The coyotes were only steps away from Preston, Olivia observed. They would be on him in seconds if they decided to act. It all felt primitive. Humans versus animals. Omnivores versus carnivores. The coyotes didn’t want to hurt Preston. They merely wanted to eat him.

  “On the count of three, let’s take to the trees,” Olivia said, deliberately keeping her voice soft and calm. “Just walk, don’t run. Running might spur them to attack.”

  “I don’t have a tree,” Preston said, his voice constricted. “I couldn’t find one.”

  “You can use mine,” Olivia said, trying to keep everything even. “It’s the pine tree right to our left. Maybe ten or twenty strides away. We can go right up the tree together. We’ll be okay if we can get to the trees.”

  “Start counting,” Tock said. “They’re coming closer.”

  “We’re not a natural prey,” Preston said. “They don’t know what to do about us.”

  “They’re hungry, though,” Tock said. “You can feel how hungry they are.”

  “One,” Olivia said.

  “They’re going to attack if I move,” Preston said. “I know they will.”

  “You don’t know that,” Tock said. “I’m the one they’ll go after, with my leg and all.”

  “Two,” Olivia said.

  The coyotes facing Preston crept forward. They had a sideways slink to them, as if they wanted to attack but couldn’t quite persuade themselves to do it. It felt like standing in the center of a molecule; the coyotes were wild electrons and Preston was the stationary nucleolus.

  “Walk slowly, three,” Olivia said.

  Preston walked toward her tree, Olivia saw. She walked behind him. It was hard not to run. She saw Tock limping his way to a different tree, one maybe twenty yards from the one she selected.

  “Easy,” she said, because the desire to run was intense.

  “They’re right next to me,” Preston said.

  “Just don’t meet their eyes,” Tock said.

  Olivia turned her head enough to see Tock step into a beech tree. It was that simple. No coyote had threatened him or approached him. He climbed up two branches and then disappeared in the tree’s dense cover. He climbed awfully well for a kid with a banged up leg. It must have been from years of practice.

  It was night, she suddenly realized. A humid, rainy night.

  Then, nearly at her feet, she heard a coyote snarl. And in the next second, the pack attacked.

  Tock watched. He couldn’t see everything due to the poor lighting, but what he saw unnerved him.

  Preston went down under a pile of coyotes.

  Not one, not two, not three. A pile of them, all of them squirming and yelping and making sounds like mad people fighting over food. They sounded other-earthly, and Tock shouted to Preston to get up in the tree, but the coyotes covered him and wouldn’t let him up.

  Next, he heard a loud yelp, then a second one. The sound came from the center of the pack, and it took Tock an instant to realize Olivia had waded into the heart of the pack and swung a branch back and forth, clubbing the animals. She clubbed them hard, and each time she connected, the coyotes made a high-pitched yelp that sent a chill down his back. But whenever a coyote backed off, another one took its place.

  “Tock, help!” Olivia screamed.

  She kept swinging the club.

  Tock wanted to help. He really did. He even turned to step down out of the tree, but as he did, he saw a coyote pass by and understood he did not want to end up like Preston, the center of a whirling mass of teeth and claws.

  “I’m coming,” Tock said, not so much lying as speaking to his intent. His good intent. He wanted to go help, he knew he should, but his body wouldn’t follow his commands. He stayed half committed, one leg dangling toward the next branch. The coyotes made a horrible, horrible racket. He hesitated.

  Then suddenly Tock saw Preston on his knees. He had managed to push himself off the ground. Olivia stood in front of him, still swinging her branch at anything that came close. She reached out a hand and helped Preston to his feet.

  “Get in the tree. Now!” she commanded. “Now!”

  Preston staggered to the pine tree and climbed up the first three branches. He could hardly hold on, Tock saw. Olivia backed her way to the tree, still swinging the branch. Tock swiveled himself around so that he could see better.

  “You got it, Olivia,” he said. “Just get up in the tree.”

  But a coyote slashed in and grabbed her leg. It bit and made a strangled sound. Olivia swung down at it with the branch but missed. She nearly fell but caught herself with the aid of the pine branches. Then another coyote hit her. Tock saw the coyote launch itself up Olivia’s body toward her throat. Sh
e brushed it away as you would a spider you found on your shirt. The coyote fell and latched itself onto her ankle. But before it could do anything else, Olivia pulled herself into the tree. The coyote stayed on the ankle for a moment, then finally dropped free like a dull, gray piece of fruit.

  “Are you guys okay?” Tock called. “Are you bleeding?”

  They didn’t answer. He heard their voices, but he couldn’t make out what they said. He tried to see the coyotes, but they were even more ghostly now in the complete darkness. Occasionally, he spotted one, but they moved almost invisibly among the trees. Like sharks, he thought. The trees were boats and the forest was a sea and the coyotes were sharks, circling.

  “Preston is bleeding,” Olivia said eventually. “So am I. It’s hard to tell how bad it all is. I can’t see in this light.”

  “Just stay in the tree,” Tock said.

  A pause followed. Then Olivia said something. It was sarcastic: “I kind of figured it was a good idea to stay in the tree.”

  “Preston, can you hold on?” Tock asked, ignoring Olivia.

  Preston didn’t answer. Tock knew if Preston fell out of the tree into the whirl of coyotes, he wasn’t likely to make it out again. Tock felt the branches already digging into his butt and feet. It was going to be a long night. A truly long night.

  “Are they staying around the tree?” Olivia called. “Tock, can you see? Are they right around us?”

  “They’re all over the place.”

  “Tie yourself in, if you can. If you have a belt or something. You don’t want to fall asleep and slip out of the tree.”

  “Okay,” Tock said. “Good idea.”

  “I hate their sounds,” Olivia said.

  “Whose sounds?”

  “The coyote sounds. The way they sound like children.”

  “Is Preston okay?” Tock asked, feeling he didn’t have a clear idea about Preston’s condition.