INI: What did you see?
HERRERA: I didn’t know at first. It was so detailed. I thought it was a pattern of some kind. Sort of geometric and repeating. It was.
INI: I don’t understand.
HERRERA: I didn’t either. But that evening, one of the interns came into the main lab. I had the easel sitting by my desk so the canvas could continue drying. She took one look at it and asked me if Manikam had done it. “Why?” I asked. She said it was because it reminded her of the painted walls of the temple her mother used to take her to when she was growing up—one county over, in the town of Guruvayur.
INI: No.
HERRERA: I didn’t believe it either. I printed a scanned copy and mailed it to them.
INI: And was it—
HERRERA: Yes. It was an exact replica of the pattern of the northern wall of Gajarajan’s residential enclosure. Down to the centimeter. [Smiles.]
INI: It’s not, it’s not—
HERRERA: I know.
INI: [After a long pause] What happened then?
HERRERA: I left. I had to. My research visa was up.
INI: That . . . That must have been hard.
HERRERA: But it was okay, you know? Now I don’t really care what anyone else thinks. I’m not a neurologist, but to me, that proved it. It proved that the stories about Gajarajan were true. That elephants really could remember things they hadn’t experienced directly, but others had. That they could . . . I don’t know.
INI: Please.
HERRERA: Like memories are something we somehow can move or share. Maybe not even all of them, but at least one. One memory. One thing that always stays, across time and space.
The amnesiac looked up from the binder, at Dr. Zadeh. “You really think we’re going to find a cure?” he asked.
Dr. Zadeh was silent for so long, the amnesiac thought he might not answer, because the answer was no, and he didn’t want to lie. “We have to,” he finally said instead.
THEY WENT OUT EVERY OTHER DAY, LOOKING FOR FOOD AND supplies in the mornings and shadowless in the afternoons. Something was happening, but it was hard to tell what. There were signs of human life left behind—things changed places, scavenged morsels among the wreckage appeared or went missing—but the humans themselves, living ones, were becoming harder and harder to find. There was more dried blood in the corners of places than there had been before. Twice they actually did glimpse other shadowed survivors—but they weren’t the sort of survivors the amnesiac wanted to meet. The first group was traveling in a set of three, and the second in a pair. All men, all wearing makeshift gear that looked as though it was for fighting, all well armed. Dr. Zadeh’s little team waited inside alleys and broken buildings until the others passed both times. They didn’t know what the men were looking for, but they didn’t want to find out.
They managed to find four more shadowless over the next few weeks. The first two had each forgotten so much they were barely wary at all. The third was far more afraid.
She was running, clothes soaked through with sweat. She must have been going for miles. “You’re safe now,” Dr. Zadeh kept repeating to her, begging her to come out from the abandoned house she’d thrown herself into when she saw them coming from the other direction.
The amnesiac started tossing the food in the open window through which she’d crawled. They’d never been so deep into the downtown before.
“We just want to help. I’m a doctor,” Dr. Zadeh continued.
Finally it was the shadowless Michael who convinced her.
“My name is Letty,” she said softly as she walked with them back toward the assisted-living facility on the other side of town.
“What were you running from?” Nurse Marie asked her.
“Exterminators,” she said.
“Exterminators?” the amnesiac asked. Beside him, he saw Michael shudder.
“You know them, too?” Dr. Zadeh had noticed the same thing.
“I thought that’s what all of you were, when you first found me,” Michael said. “They—” He shrugged helplessly. “Now I don’t remember. I just remember that they’re bad.”
“Ones with shadows who kill ones without,” Letty continued. It seemed like she couldn’t speak above a whisper. “They go around, looking for us.”
“Why?” Dr. Zadeh asked, voice stony.
Letty shook her head. “Money or food.” She paused. “They also enjoy it, I think.”
The amnesiac shook his head in disgust. “Who’s paying them?” he asked at last.
“Whoever’s inside the city hall. Someone’s still trying to run things. Trying to clean up New Orleans before too many shadowless—” She stopped abruptly, mouth snapped shut, and stared in terror at them all. Magic. Hemu’s frightened voice came back to the amnesiac, the pleading expression in the young man’s exhausted, terrified eyes.
“It’s all right,” Dr. Zadeh said to her. “We know. About the . . . pull.”
Letty’s eyes darted to the amnesiac’s.
“We do,” he said. “It’s real.” The Mandai spice market in Pune flashed in his mind. Or rather the memory of it, because it didn’t exist anymore. “We’ve seen it happen.”
THE FOURTH SHADOWLESS THEY MET BECAUSE OF LETTY. They also met their first exterminators.
“She was—I don’t know. But I know we were together before we forgot why, so she has to be someone important,” Letty said to the amnesiac as they all crept across Lafayette Square. They were deep into the Central Business District just south of the French Quarter, looking for a street they hoped Letty would still find familiar. It was far past their usual search boundaries, but Dr. Zadeh was getting desperate. The shadowless had been disappearing like ghosts. There were so few left now, and those they did see ran well before anyone could get close enough, even Michael. If this shadowless still remembered Letty even a little, they stood a chance of convincing her to come with them.
The neighborhood clearly unnerved Letty, every sound and creak of wood pricking like a needle on a fresh new spot of skin. The amnesiac looked around nervously, her fear making him jumpy. Here he didn’t know the angles to hide in, the directions to run that weren’t dead ends. They wound their way deeper in.
The shadowless they sought was still alive, hiding between two empty buildings, almost exactly where Letty had said she lost her when she’d started running, so many days ago.
“You’re alive,” Letty gasped when she finally saw her.
The shadowless looked up from where she was crouched between a few Dumpsters. The amnesiac saw the flash of recognition in her eyes—she remembered Letty still. “Shh,” she hissed.
The amnesiac and the others didn’t move for a second, but Letty darted behind another of the Dumpsters immediately. “Hide,” she said. She mouthed the word exterminators.
They all threw themselves down behind piles of concrete, burned-out furniture, any shape that would hide them as the footsteps echoed closer, but it was too late. The exterminators had already seen them.
“Look at this,” the one covered in scars said to the other, probably the tallest man the amnesiac had ever seen in person. He took the gun out of his holster. “Newbies. You all know you’re in Jackson’s neighborhood, right?”
“Jackson’s neighborhood?”
The tall one looked at the scarred one with his eyes narrowed. “I’ve had it with this. People crawling out of the woodwork, muscling in on our area.” He pointed the gun straight at the amnesiac, and Dr. Zadeh and Nurse Marie shrieked, shouting pleading things that interrupted each other and made no sense. “You can’t just come in here and take our catch. That isn’t how it works.”
“I’m sorry,” the amnesiac said shakily. “We didn’t know.”
“Yeah, right,” the tall one sneered. “Explain that, then.” His gun moved to aim casually at Letty and the other shadowless, causing them to cower to the ground, whimpering.
“Family!” the amnesiac cried. “They lost their shadows a week ago. We’re all fami
ly. We’re just looking for food.”
“Food here in this neighborhood also belongs to Jackson,” the scarred one said. “But more importantly, so does your family now.”
“No,” Dr. Zadeh said.
“Once they lose their shadows, they’re ours.”
“What about when you lose yours?” Dr. Zadeh asked the scarred exterminator.
The tall one tipped his head at his partner. “Then I’ll shoot him immediately and collect my reward for it.”
“Or the other way around,” the scarred one added, grinning.
“Please, we’ll leave. We’ll never come back,” the amnesiac promised.
“No can do,” the scarred exterminator said. He stepped closer. “See, even if I did believe you that these two were your family, they’re still shadowless, and you’re still in our hunting neighborhood.” The grin dropped off his face. “But I don’t believe you anyway.”
“Shadowless are almost gone, or hiding,” the tall one said. “Other guys have been crowding our territory for months now, taking our kills. We’ve heard every story there is twice. Including yours. I’m putting a stop to it.”
“Please—” Dr. Zadeh started to say just as something cruised soundlessly through the air overhead. The only way any of them knew it had been there at all was the huge dark square it cast down over them as it passed.
In the same instant, Letty’s shadowless friend and the two exterminators dropped into tight crouches, covering their heads. It wasn’t just an instinctual flinch to some nearby movement, the amnesiac realized with a chill—it was a deliberate, practiced move.
“What was that?” the amnesiac gasped.
“Come on,” the scarred exterminator said to the tall one, already running away.
“The shadowless,” he replied angrily.
But the scarred one was already halfway down the street. “No time. I’m not dying today.”
A gust of wind made everyone jump again, and the shadowless whimpered in terror, sinking even lower to the ground.
“We have to go, man,” the scarred one yelled. “Jackson! Come on!”
“Your lucky day,” the tall exterminator snarled at them. He pointed a finger straight at Dr. Zadeh’s chest. “We catch you leaning in on our business again, it’ll be the last time.”
Dr. Zadeh refused to answer. “We hear,” the amnesiac said.
“Don’t forget now,” he teased, sinister, nodding his chin at their still-there shadows. Then he bolted after his friend, eyes checking the sky.
As soon as the exterminators disappeared around the corner, everyone gasped, suddenly remembering to breathe again. “What was that thing?” Nurse Marie cried, and tried to grab both the amnesiac and Dr. Zadeh, but they had each moved out of her reach at the same moment, to look up. They spun around, trying to see the sky between the buildings, but the roofs were too close together, their view of the sky too narrow. Letty ran to the shadowless she knew, Michael close behind her.
“Was it a plane?” Dr. Zadeh yelled. “Was it a plane?”
Letty’s friend was shaking now. She seemed to shrink down onto the asphalt of the alley. “Hey.” The amnesiac crouched, so as to be on her same level. “Do you know what that was?”
The shadowless’s eyes stared straight through him, unblinking. “It’s coming back.” She trembled.
The amnesiac turned back to look at Dr. Zadeh, who was still staring into the sky. “What is it? What’s coming back?” he asked, but she was too terrified to answer.
“If it was a plane—if someone is still flying a plane—” Dr. Zadeh continued excitedly. “We have to get their attention!”
“Wait,” the amnesiac said to Letty. “Keep hold of her.” He ran for a utility ladder welded to the side of a building, to climb up to the roof.
“Be careful!” Nurse Marie cried, watching him ascend with a concerned expression on her face. “Keep away from the edge! You can’t judge depth with one eye!” She’d been the first nurse the amnesiac had depended upon when he arrived at the assisted-living facility, when he was barely strong enough for crutches, and she still worried after him as if he was still her charge.
“Almost there!” the amnesiac yelled to her. He hauled himself onto the flat top of the building. Dusk was falling, smearing everything with an orangy-purple haze. On the horizon, so far it looked to be over the western area of Metairie, a dark thing rippled in the sky. “I can’t see—” he started to say. And then he heard the screams.
Nurse Marie was at Dr. Zadeh’s side by the time the amnesiac had scrambled back to the edge of the roof to peer down at them, clutching a trembling Michael to her with knuckles that had gone white. Letty cowered with her companion.
“What did you see?” Dr. Zadeh asked softly.
The dark shape passed overhead again. It was the size of a small house, with angles as sharp as blades. There were more screams from the direction in which it had gone.
“Jesus Christ,” Nurse Marie said.
Dr. Zadeh took the new shadowless’s face in his hands and made her look at him. “What is it?” he asked firmly, in the voice he had mastered over decades of practice, a tone of absolute authority that could cut through fear or pain, or even sometimes the terrified fog of an Alzheimer’s episode, and could compel any patient to answer him. “What. Is. It.”
The shadowless’s eyes finally focused on Dr. Zadeh. “Deathkite,” she whispered.
From his vantage point above them, the amnesiac saw the shape lean into the wind to return toward them once more.
“We have to get inside,” he breathed. “Right now.”
LATER, AFTER THEY’D GOTTEN LETTY AND HER FRIEND THEY had named Jo back to the facility, the amnesiac remembered that Hemu had once told him it was customary to fly celebratory kites on Zero Shadow Day. After everyone had had their fun with the moment of shadowlessness and the shadows had returned, the afternoon would turn toward food and games. Little boys loved that part most of all, the kite flying—or rather, the kite fighting. The object of the game was to be the last one still aloft. In their desperation to win, the boys often rubbed the strings with powdered glass so they could saw through one another’s lines as the fabric sheets crossed, and later even cheated by adding hidden blades to the edges of the frames, to cut the bodies of other kites.
At the time, the amnesiac thought he would have liked to have seen a kite fight, if it had been possible. In a way, he’d gotten his wish. Was it Hemu? He often wondered, each time over the months that followed that he watched the deathkites circle overhead—wonderful things that had been twisted into something horrible and evil by accident. Was it Hemu, or had it been someone else?
“Nurse Marie?” Vivi’s voice came from the dimly glowing hallway. She, the amnesiac, and Dr. Zadeh turned to see the old woman leaning nervously into the room. Candles were in each corner, but since they’d boarded up all the windows for safety against the riots, it always looked no brighter than dusk at all times. In the weak light, Vivi looked even frailer than by day. “You’d better come.”
“What is it, dear?” Nurse Marie asked, rising to her feet. The knee was giving her trouble again, the amnesiac saw. “Everyone’s all right?”
“We’re all right,” Vivi said. There was a long pause. Beside him, the amnesiac heard Dr. Zadeh sigh, exhausted. Vivi looked down. “It happened again, to Edith.”
THEY WERE SHORT ONLY ONE MORE SHADOWLESS WHEN A second pair of exterminators found them. Dr. Zadeh was in the middle of handing food they’d brought to the tiny ball of rags shivering against the concrete wall, and Michael and Letty were calling quietly to it. The amnesiac never saw if it was a man or a woman, old or young. The shadowless was about to reach for the food, just one withered hand and two narrowed eyes visible from the folds of dirty fabric, but then in a swirl of layers, it was gone.
“What the—” Dr. Zadeh gasped in frustration.
“‘What the’ indeed,” a low voice said from behind them. “I’d ask you the same question about what t
he fuck you’re doing here.”
They all turned at once, hearts stuttering. The amnesiac’s skin went cold and clammy. There were two figures there, a man and woman, dressed in old police riot gear. Exterminators.
“Looks like they were after that one that just got away,” the woman replied to her partner. Her eyes landed coldly back on Dr. Zadeh.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” he began.
They tried to explain—their experiments, their hope to discover a cure. The amnesiac could see in their eyes that they didn’t care. To them, there was no difference between Dr. Zadeh killing a shadowless in their territory or saving one. In either case, it was a body taken away for which they didn’t get paid.
Dr. Zadeh shouted for Michael and Letty to run then—as far as they could, as fast as they could. He knew that no matter how it ended up, the two of them would never be allowed to live. They were worth too much to the exterminators. Shots went off as they sprinted, deafening booms. The amnesiac couldn’t look, but as he cowered in front of the exterminators and their guns, hands spread protectively in front of his face, he didn’t hear either of them fall.
“Please,” Nurse Marie was on her knees, begging for Dr. Zadeh’s life. “Please.” But there was nothing they could offer that the exterminators wanted.
They killed him.
Mahnaz Ahmadi
SMITH TRES, THE SOLDIER WHO WAS STABBED DURING THE last attempt to trade, didn’t develop a fever, but the General wouldn’t know if he was out of the woods for at least another week. Naz was just so relieved that he hadn’t died on the first night—when he’d been so pale from blood loss his lips were almost blue, teeth chattering, unable to keep warm despite all the blankets she took from her own bed and all the other beds of the soldiers under her command. They’d lost so many people recently. Both to death and to the Forgetting. A few days ago, she even saw a new Red that she’d once known the year before—he’d fought in their army before he lost his shadow and forgot he had. He’d been one of her best scouts, just like Tres was now. Both of them as brave and reckless as she’d ever seen. Both of them almost lost completing missions she’d ordered. Naz didn’t know if she’d be able to bear it if another person from her team died.
The Book of M Page 23
