The Stone War

by Madeleine E. Robins

  “Give us the baby, mister,” one of the monsters had said. DeeDee didn’t realize for a moment that she was the baby.

  “Yeah, mister, give us the little girl. She b’longs with us now,” the other monster said. They talked slow and quiet, so that DeeDee wasn’t scared of them. Daddy was, though. He believed her now, DeeDee thought, pleased. He knew she wasn’t lying.

  “Give us the baby, mister.” A voice behind them. DeeDee turned and saw five more monsters, each one differently funny-looking. One of these had a chain that she kept sliding through metallic fingers; another had knives, a belt filled with knives, and a single round knifelike tooth that pinned his mouth closed. One looked like a big yellow bird and fixed DeeDee with his cold, round stare, and that did scare her.

  “Let us pass,” Daddy called. Mickey grabbed DeeDee’s arm and pulled her close.

  “Fuck off, man. Give us the girl, she belongs with us.” That was the woman with the chain. She smiled at DeeDee and DeeDee shrank back against Mickey. “Come on, sweetie-pie. We’re your family now,” the woman continued.

  “Dad,” Mickey said waveringly. The monsters behind them had been joined by a few more. The two ahead now were six, each with weapons, each with a scary sort of smile. “Dad, what’re we gonna do?”

  “Shut up, Mickey.” Daddy reached out, grabbed DeeDee tight with fingers that hurt, and pushed her behind him, sandwiched between him and Mickey. Then he pulled Mickey in close.

  “Back off. I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Daddy said. He swept the gun in a half-circle, threatening the monsters.

  “But the monsters didn’t get scared,” Missy said, her tone echoing DeeDee’s own incomprehension. “They didn’t go away, they just kept coming closer. And one of them hit DeeDee’s Daddy.”

  In fact, the woman with the chain had swung it at Daddy, and he had ducked, but the movement knocked him off balance and he lost the gun for a moment. In the seconds while he regained his weapon two of the monsters—the knife-man and a short, round young man with bad acne who waved razor-fingered hands as if he were trying to hypnotize—got close enough to Daddy to knock him down again. Daddy shot the razor-boy with his gun. “Not shot-him-dead,” Missy explained. “Just shot him so he couldn’t fight no more. But the other man, with the tooth, knocked DeeDee’s Daddy down and they started fighting, rolling around and hitting each other hard, and DeeDee was scared ’cause the other man had lots of knives.”

  “I was very very scared,” DeeDee said, almost in a whisper.

  Mickey was fighting someone or something behind them, too. DeeDee didn’t turn to look. She was watching Daddy roll around with the knife-man, one on top, then the other, round and round, panting and cursing, each one bleeding from little cuts. DeeDee watched the knives in the knife-man’s belt, watched until Daddy and the monster rolled back near to her. Then she jumped on the knife-man.

  “Don’t you hurt my Daddy!” DeeDee screamed, pulling at the monster’s arm, hitting his head and shoulders with her funny new hands, kicking at him.

  Another monster—the woman with the chain—pulled DeeDee away and held her with an arm across her chest, murmuring, “Hush, kid. They’re not your family anymore; we’re your family now.”

  For the first time since she was changed, DeeDee opened her hand—her claw—and bit it savagely into the woman’s arm. The woman screeched and fell backward and DeeDee ran forward again, screaming “Daddy, Daddy!” until she got close enough to see the blood, so much of it, and DeeDee knew nothing was going to help. Then she turned around to see where Mickey was: behind them, with an old man bending over him, raising something to hit Mickey. Again DeeDee threw herself on the monster, using her claws to hit and tear, pulling the man away, screaming all the time “Go away, go away, leave us alone!” in a high high voice. The voice of panic, Tietjen thought, like the voice that had driven him back to New York.

  The woman DeeDee had clawed called for help; she was bleeding. The old-man monster—his face had ridges running across it, as if his nose couldn’t decide where to settle—broke away from DeeDee’s attack. Mickey was bleeding, but not like Daddy. Mickey was alive.

  DeeDee grabbed him with her claws, grabbed carefully at his collar and waist, trying not to nip her brother’s skin, and she pulled. Mickey was heavier than she, he had to help her: push with his feet, slide on his butt, do whatever he could to help her move him away from them.

  In his head Tietjen could hear her voice, a tearful, high stream of words: “push-Mickey-push-with-your-feet-help-me-I-can’t-pull-you-you’ re-too-big-please-Mickey-please-Mickey-push-they’re-coming-please-pushpush push—” But the monsters weren’t coming now. They’d turned away, carrying the fat razor-boy and the chain woman and the knife-man.

  “We’ll be back for you, sweetheart,” the chain-woman said, sweetly, as if she was reassuring DeeDee. “Don’t you worry.”

  DeeDee pulled Mickey to a building, pulled him inside, found a door that opened, urged him through it. Then she looked at her brother, not much hurt, bruised and a cut on his arm, and scared. He pulled away from DeeDee and rolled himself into a ball, crying. DeeDee sat down at his side and began to cry too. After a while Mickey rolled over and they cried together, arms wrapped around each other, DeeDee with her claws gingerly held away from her brother’s skin. They cried until their stomachs were empty, then sat together shaking, hiccuping, dirty and ragged, very small in a corner of the big room they sat in. After a while they fell asleep.

  “When she woke up in the morning,” Missy said quietly, “Mickey was gone.”

  Tietjen started at the matter-of-factness of it. Mickey had vanished overnight, left his five-year-old sister to the mercies of Gable’s people. There had been no sign of a struggle—the kid had left on his own. Jesus.

  “So then DeeDee had to hide out for a long time, and stay away from the monsters and stuff. And then she saw Mr. Tietjen and the people from Here and she went up to them and they took her home and now she lives with us.”

  DeeDee looked up and backward at Missy, muttered one more comment.

  “And she did pull Mickey away, and she was brave.”

  Tietjen leaned his head against the windowsill. Brave.

  “What are you looking at?” Barbara asked. She had come up behind Tietjen, and startled him so badly he almost lost his plate out the window. “Sorry, but what’s up?”

  He made a place for her on the windowsill. “Shhh. Listen.”

  “That’s the end,” Missy said. “I want to play ball now.” She stood up, and Kathy’s two sisters stood with her, looking at their sister as if to ask permission. She gabbled something at them, they nodded and followed Missy, with DeeDee following them calling “I want to play ball too!”

  Tietjen relaxed against the windowsill. “Jesus, that poor kid. Have you heard her story? I wonder how much of that is true?”

  “All of it, I should think,” Barbara said.

  “But God, it’s less than six months since the disaster hit, and already there’re legends about it.” Tietjen shook his head. “Legends told by children.”

  “Not legends. Reassurances. When Gordie knocked out his front tooth riding his tricycle, that became his favorite story: How Gordie Lost His Tooth. He wanted to hear it every night, and I couldn’t leave any of the gory details out. He wanted the blood, and the stitches, and the crying and the fear and everything in the story. I must have told it a hundred times, I could probably tell it now.”

  “Why do they do that to themselves,” Tietjen wondered, appalled.

  “They don’t do it because it hurts, John. They do it because it heals. Kids tell themselves stories about the things that scare them until the things lose their power, until it becomes safe.”

  “When does it become safe? How could it ever be safe?” DeeDee’s story felt like a stone in his gut: Tietjen could not understand how the little girl had survived, could play and run around and sing like any normal child. Barbara patted his knee briskly.

  “It’s safe
now, John. Look at what you’ve done: it’s safe now.” Barbara rose and took her plate back to the kitchen. Tietjen looked out the window, watched the four little girls playing with the ball, watched Kathy Calvino sitting with her crutch, calling gibberished warnings to her sisters. The boys had come inside to get dinner; soon enough Elena would call the girls in too. A routine, quiet and known. Safe. Was Barbara right? He finished his food and went back to work.

  2

  HE dreamt of Irene at the end of the world.

  Behind her eyes, listening to her thoughts, he understood at last and for the first time her fear, the suspicious terror that other people, their autonomous motives and intentions, had always evoked in her. He knew the fierce love she had for their sons; the mixture of pride and resentment she felt for the work she did; and the reluctant, sad remnants of affection that Irene had for him and their marriage. He came the closest he had in a long time to loving her wholly: even in sleep he grieved as he watched helplessly from behind her eyes, waiting for what would come.

  Irene had been shopping, buying socks and underwear for the boys, sorting through plastic packets of boys’ underpants until she found one that met her inscrutable criteria. She disliked these trips into the communal world, sharing the same space, the same air with hundreds of strangers. She could smell a mix of perfume, sweat, polish and disinfectant on the air; it made her feel unclean and sick to her stomach. An elderly woman fingering the neat rows of plastic-sealed packages next to her suddenly turned and shouldered past Irene, so that her hip hit the display counter painfully. Reflexively, Irene turned and stared at the woman’s awkwardly retreating back, hating her: a clean, holy rage aimed like an arrow at the old woman’s shoulders. Irene turned back to the display.

  She had moved from underwear back to the socks and was deciding between a soft golden brown that made her think of Chris’s hair, and a dark navy that was safe, long-wearing. She was absorbed enough in the choice that, at first, she did not realize that something had happened.

  Then it happened again. There was a sizzle and the smell of ozone, and the greenish fluorescent lights blinked. The floor underneath Irene’s feet moved in a slow, easy undulation, rolling from one wall to the other. The heavy display counters hardly shrugged in the motion, but farther down the floor Irene could see the rise and fall of a sea of racks, the hangered contents waving gently with the motion.

  New York does not have earthquakes. Tietjen could hear her thought. At the same time she denied what had happened, she was quietly putting aside the socks and underwear she had chosen and was trying to remember where the elevator was. No, not the elevator. If this was an earthquake (New York does not have earthquakes) the elevator would not be safe. The stairs. Chris and Davy should be home by now, they’ll be downstairs in the after-school room at the building, someone will take care of them until I get home. I’ll call and let them know I’m all right. But New York does not—

  It started again. The scariest thing was the slowness of it, the laziness of that rise and fall. This time the peak was higher: Irene could feel herself slipping, her feet swept out from under her in slow motion. Across the floor a quick shriek rang out, fast and out of tempo with the slow dance of counters and racks. She caught herself as she fell and pulled herself upright. The stairs. Light flickered and dimmed, and in the twilight the counters and racks churned lumberingly. A voice called for a clerk, lights, help. She heard someone crying.

  She was on the sixth floor. (Why is the children’s department up away from everything else? she wondered.) Irene held on to two sides of the display counter and scanned desperately for the emergency-exit signs, which should have been flashing in the dimness but were not. Six flights of stairs; how long would it take to get down six flights of stairs? A dark form scuttled by her, the store ID badge glinting faintly in the traces of light. “Where are the stairs?” Irene called.

  The figure did not stop. The light flickered on for a moment and Irene could see a young woman stuffing things into a shopping bag, grabbing whatever she could reach indiscriminately and filling her pockets, her handbag. No clerk came to stop her; Irene thought she saw a man in a store blazer retreating toward a far wall. The stairs, she thought triumphantly. Angrily.

  The floor flexed again. There was a crash behind her, but Irene did not stop to look. She clung heavily to the counter for another minute until the world stopped tossing, then began to follow the clerk, slipping into a bent-kneed crouch that was uncomfortable but gave her a feeling of stability. Then, with shocking abruptness, the air crackled with ozone and the heaving of the floor stopped. She had a sudden feeling of peace and stability that was almost uncanny. The lights came back up on the gigantic disarray of the displays and racks. A pair of mannequins, towheaded children, clung to each other on the floor as if for comfort. A woman’s voice rang out with uncertain humor: “I suppose next thing, there’ll be an earthquake sale!” Someone called angrily for a sales clerk. A very young child began to cry noisily; without even seeing him Irene imagined him, his mouth gaping widely, his face glistening with mucus and tears, probably black or Hispanic, she thought. She felt no pity for the child, just a crushing rush to get gone. The stairs.

  She worked her way across the floor, wading through a bright sea of fallen blouses in what a downed sign called LATEST LITTLE GIRL COLORS, pushing past islands of disaster, sales clerks clustered around the body of a young man that lay too still. Irene curled her lip, as if the man had committed a crime against decorum. It was dangerous at the best of times to stop and mix with strangers. The exit signs were functional again, glowing a pale green against the off-white wall. The elevators were probably working, but just in case … Irene turned toward the stairway.

  The door was heavy steel, meant to seal out fire and smoke. When it slammed behind her and she was alone in the starkly lit white stairwell, her relief was mixed with a sudden, passionate desire to go back to the sales floor, be among people again. The air in the stairwell was cool and musty. Irene leaned against the railing for a moment, then started to descend, taking a leisurely pace. She had made it down one flight when the lights went out again.

  Someone in the stairwell above her screamed. The stairs tilted again, creaking. Irene clung heavily to a banister made of iron and wood-grained plastic that felt insubstantial and malleable under her hands. Behind her the door to the sixth floor swung open with a clang, steel door and steel wall singing out in protest; even in the dark Irene could see the indistinct shadows of people moving around her, spilling silently into the stairwell. The lights flickered on again, the stark yellow of emergency floodlights this time.

  Tietjen in his dreaming felt his own skin prickle as the crowd pressed into the stairwell, more people than he—or Irene—had thought were contained on the sixth floor. Some looked weird—grotesque, somehow, as if something had twisted them. The old woman who had bumped into Irene earlier pushed past her again, arms thrust stiffly out in front of her as if she were warding off dangers. Again Irene glared at her, her rage at all crowds and all strangers spearing through the old woman’s shoulders.

  There was a cry and the woman pitched forward, a shaft like an arrow centered in her back.

  Someone to her left cried and would have stopped, but the press was too insistent, the force of bodies behind them too strong. Irene, pushed past where the old woman lay, thought, I did that. She was not proud of it or sorry, just certain. I did that.

  Then she was carried along in the tide of people around her, down the stairs, so that she barely felt her feet touching the concrete steps. Her anger rose up at the familiar touch, so many shoulders and stomachs and legs and hands, too close, too insinuating. The anger was suffocating; she tried to turn it into concern, to drown the urge to shriek in thinking of her sons. They would be safe in the after-school room in their building. Maybe this thing—what the hell was it? Everyone knew that New York did not have earthquakes—wasn’t happening that far uptown. Still, she pushed against the nubbly cloth of the coat
in front of her. I must get home.

  The stairs shook convulsively, tossing the tightly packed bodies together, apart, together again. There was a diminishing scream: someone must have fallen over the banister. Irene shook her head as she pushed forward. Acid rose in her throat and she felt dizzy. “What is happening?” she heard someone cry, and echoed the thought. For the first time it occurred to her that she might actually die, here in the stairwell, in a crowd of people who had probably been buying underpants for their own children, or winter jackets or gloves or tablecloths. Among strangers.

  “No!” Irene pushed hard against the coat in front of her, waiting for the body to give way, let her past. She never willingly touched a stranger, but now she was beyond such refinement. She pushed again and felt a hard shove in her own back. “Stop it,” she said without turning her head. She pushed again, again felt the hands pushing square in the center of her back. She turned her head to yell at the person behind her, “I’m trying, can’t you see I’m trying?”

  As she turned she lost her footing.

  For a long moment she thought the pressure of bodies against her own would hold her up as she sought desperately to find the concrete stair under her feet again. It eluded her, as if it were deliberately jumping away from her. Irene felt herself slipping, the nubbly coat rough against her cheek as she fell. The hand at her back pushed again.

  “Stop it, please help me, stop it, please …” Nothing stopped, the pressure did not cease, something was dragging her downward into the concrete stairwell as inexorably as if it were quicksand. “Please,” she tried again, grasping at the coat of the stranger in front of her. She had no idea if it was a man or a woman, she hadn’t cared, but now she wondered. I’m going crazy, she thought. Who cares? “Help me,” one last try. The words were swallowed up in the nubbly tweed cloth, and she felt herself pitching forward down the stairs with frightening slowness, defying the laws of gravity to fall with terrible grace into nowhere. The hand behind her urged her head forward, down the stairs. Her chin hit the metal runner at the lip of the stair.