“Crystal,” Moji said, “I don't understand it myself. I'm scared too. I just have this feeling it's not safe to go out there while the...the….”
“She-devil,” Wilma said.
“Yes, thank you Wilma,” Moji said, “It’s too dangerous for us to go out there while the she-devil is so close.”
“What the hell is a she-devil?” Crystal said.
Before anyone could answer, there was a sharp sound, like the crack of whip, it's waves echoed through lobby, the remnants of which found their way into the stairwell.
“What was that?” Moji said.
“That was a gunshot,” Crystal replied, “and it was close by.”
“Oh lordy!” Wilma said as she strained to pull herself up into a standing position, “Angel, we best get away from this place! The devil, she about to start a ruckus!”
“Calm down Wilma!” Moji said, You know we can't leave yet.”
Wilma plopped back down on the stair, cradled her knees to her chest, and began to rock back and forth. “Oh lordy oh lordy oh lordy,” she said over and over.
“Moji, please fill a sister in,” Crystal said, her eyes wide with fear, “what is she talking about?”
“You can't feel it?” Moji said, her voice trembling.
There was noise coming from the lobby, on the other side of the door.
“Shit, someone's out there!” Crystal said.
“Yes,” Moji said. She put her arms around Wilma's shoulders and pulled her close to her.
Crystal scurried part way up the stairs, to the first landing. “Moji!” she said as loud as she dared, “shouldn't we be running away now?”
“We can't leave Wilma,” Moji said, without turning to look at Crystal, “I won't leave her.”
The noise in the lobby drew closer until it was right outside the door. The door knob turned.
“Oh shit,” Crystal said.
The door creaked open...and a man’s head poked through the opening. It was Ray.
Moji recoiled and began to visibly shake at the sight of him. “You!” she said.
Two more gunshots reverberated through the lobby, punctuating her words.
“Oh lordy lordy,” Wilma said.
“Moji…?” Crystal said as she rushed down the stairs, “Moji, what's wrong!?”
“Lordy!” Wilma said, pointing at the man, “He a unborn!”
Ray opened his mouth to speak when two more gunshots rang out in quick succession.
“What the hell is going on out there!?” Crystal said.
Ray quickly stepped into the stairwell and let the door close behind him. “Couple of rednecks out in the parking garage held me up at gunpoint. I tried to tell them about the monsters and the dogs and shit, but they didn't listen. They shot one of the dogs and then the monster in the bikini showed up. I guess it's got their full attention now. I didn't stick around for the end of the show.”
Moji lay back on the stairs, eyes closed, her back arched and her arms and legs rigid as if an electric current were passing through her body.
Crystal kneeled beside Moji and held her friend's hand in her own. “Moji! Moji, wake up! Wilma, what's wrong with her?”
Ray took a stepped to the right of the staircase and stared at Moji through the bars of the steel banister. “I think she's having a seizure.”
Crystal thrust a finger at Ray. “You stay away from her!”
“No child,” Wilma began, “she's…”
Suddenly, Moji gasped and her eyes snapped open. Her left hand squeezed Crystal's wrist hard enough to bruise it and her right hand whipped between the banister's steel bars and clamped around Ray’s injured forearm.
The three of them went silent and still, locked in a frozen embrace.
“Lordy,” Wilma whispered, “my angel, she’s coming, she coming quick.”
37
There is a flash and then Ray is face down in the dirt, back in Khost Province, Afghanistan.
Back to hell.
He could feel the grit of the sand in his mouth, the weight of his pack on his back, and smell the sweaty stench of recent death that hung in the desert air like rush hour smog.
“Go go go!” screams his commander, Sergeant Kevin “Kevlar” Morrison. Ray’s unit gave him that nickname because he was always dressed head to foot in body armor. Sergeant Morrison is screaming at Ray and pointing at a depression in the dirt about one hundred yards to his three o’clock.
“Get up private!” the sergeant screams, “Move!”
Ray didn't move. Instead, he just lay there in the dirt with his knees tucked into his chest, his arms wrapped around his helmet, trying his best to curl into the smallest ball possible. He could hear the insurgent’s rounds plowing into the soft dirt—pfft, pfft, pfft—mere feet from his head. Sand from the impact of the large caliber rounds pelted his back and stuck to the nape of his neck. “Help me! I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die!” he screams at Sergeant Morrison.
“Get up now private!” Sergeant Morrison screams again.
He felt fingers dig into his neck and grab the back of his helmet. The sergeant yanked him to his knees and points to a depression in the dirt.
“Move! Move! Move!” he says, then Sergeant Morrison leaves Ray to die and runs toward the depression, staying low to the ground, zig-zagging every few feet, like they taught us to do in boot camp.
“Sergeant, don’t leave me!” Ray screams into the space rapidly growing between them. He was on his hands and knees, tears mix with the sweat on his face and drip off his chin, creating big wet splotches in the dry sand. “Oh God, I don’t want to die,” he says as he rises to his feet and chases after his commander. He is forty yards behind the sergeant, running low to the ground, hugging his M16 tight to his chest. “Sergeant, wait for me!” he says, running as fast as he can, choking on his own spit, his voice raspy and weak in the dry, hot air. He follows the sergeant’s path in the sand, tracing his footsteps, copying his zig-zag movements. The sand explodes all around him—pfft, pfft, pfft. I’m gonna die! he thinks, I’m gonna die in this freaking hellhole of a place, in this fucking patch of desert in the middle of freaking nowhere! I’m never going to see my girl Shelly again!
Sergeant Morrison is twenty yards ahead of him. Ray is close enough now to see that their destination is more than a depression in the sand, it’s a deep hole, a deep rectangular hole carved in the middle of the desert.
Sergeant Morrison stops and glances back in Ray's direction. He waves for Ray to pick up the pace.
Ray waves back. “I’m coming!” he says. But Sergeant Morrison doesn't hear him because his words are drowned out by a loud whistling from the sky. The sergeant turns and takes another step towards the hole.
And then the desert between them explodes.
Hot stinging dirt sandblasts Ray’s hands and face and he’s thrown backwards into the dirt. Pain erupts from both his ears and a loud ringing momentarily drowns out the panicked chatter of his inner voice. An acrid smoke stings his eyes, obscuring his vision. “Sergeant! Sergeant!” he screams, but there isn't an answer. He almost doesn't recognize his own voice, it sounds muffled and distorted. The ground between him and where he last saw Sergeant Morrison is scarred and blackened. He turns over and lay on his stomach. The rectangular hole is only fifty yards away. Only fifty yards to safety, he thinks, I can make it! He begins to crawl toward it. He moves slowly at first, using the smoky haze that hangs in the air as cover.
Only forty yards away now.
The sand resumes its dangerous dance—pfft, pfft, pfft.
He gets to his feet and runs.
Twenty yards away.
The rectangular hole in the desert grows larger as he approaches until it morphs into a pit the size of a shipping container. The sun casts a harsh shadow over its surface, pushing the bottom out of view. A bottomless pit from hell, his mind warns.
Ten yards away.
Bullets rip the air around him. He cries out in pain as a bullet finds his
left clavicle and shatters it. He stumbles the last five yards and falls, head first, into the pit. The black of the pit envelopes him and he braces myself for impact. He lands, not on dirt, but on a surface lain with uneven rows of bundled cloth, stuffed and tied like withered Christmas trees bound for the dump. His shattered clavicle floods his mind with pain, so much pain that, at first, he doesn't notice the smell.
Suddenly, he convulses uncontrollably and retches, vomiting the last of his water and pieces of undigested MRE onto a patch of mottled linen.
“God, what is that smell?” he says out loud, and instantly regrets it. His words are replaced with the taste of rotting meat. He puts a hand over his mouth and nose then sits upright, searching for more breathable air. He closes then slowly opens his eyes, forcing them to adjust to the murky twilight. Through the dim light he recognizes a familiar contour, a torso covered in body armor. ”Sergeant!” Ray says, as he crawls over the linen bundles toward the silhouette propped motionless against the reddish hue of the caked clay wall, “Man am I glad to see you! I didn't think we were going to make it. I caught a round in my shoulder. It hurts like hell but I think it’s just a flesh wound.” He was close enough now to see his commander clearly. “Sergeant, are you ok?” he asks, his voice trailing off as he realizes the answer to his own question.
Sergeant Kevin “Kevlar” Morrison is not ok.
The sergeant’s legs, left arm, and half his skull had been blown off. What remained was a broken mannequin of bone, dirt, and blood.
“No!” Ray says and he tries to stand, to turn, to look away from the scorched remains of his commander. He stumbles backward, trying to gain purchase on the bundles of cloth at his feet. One of the bundles yields under his weight and collapses, deflates like a balloon, and belches air so vile that it makes him gag. His left boot tears through the cloth of one of the linen bundles and sinks, ankle deep, into a puddle of what feels like mud. He looks closer and sees that his boot is not covered in mud but in a thick slurry of human waste. He panics and falls backward, causing the liquefied remains to spill from their cocoon and cover his boot and pant leg in an oily mixture of guts and dissolved bone. His head hits the opposite wall and snaps forward. Pain erupts from his gunshot wound, stunning him into motionlessness and pushing him to the edge of consciousness. Lord please, don’t let me die in this God-forsaken hellhole, he prays.
As the sun peeks over the lip of the pit, scattering the darkness, Ray hears the voice of God:
Go now Ray, she says, hide from your enemies. Go beneath the bodies and cover yourself in the elixir of life. Be one with the elixir of life and live.
“Hide from my enemies,” he says, “I have to hide.” It was then that Ray heard other voices. It was the enemy, approaching the lip of the pit, speaking the devil’s language, searching for him. His eyes snapped open. He was fully awake now. I have to get out of sight before they reach the edge of the pit and spot me. The sun was high enough to fully illuminate the far side of the pit. He could clearly see the charred remains of his commander staring back at him, mocking him. You should have stayed by my side private, it seemed to say, and died a glorious death, a soldier’s death, instead of cowering in the dirt like a chickenshit coward. Ray watches in horror as the sergeant’s lower jaw suddenly gapes open, disengages from its proper place on his face, then slowly rappels down his shirt on a rope of sinew and dislodged teeth. I’m laughing at you Private “Chickenshit” Hillman, ray hears Sergeant Morrison say. I’m laughing at you chickenshit because you thought by hanging back, by betraying your brothers, you would save yourself. Jokes on you chickenshit, because in a few moments those insurgents are gonna peek over the lip of this mass grave and see your sorry chickenshit ass huddled in a fetal position with a bunch of decomposing villagers, and they are gonna end you and leave your sorry ass down here to rot with the rest of us. See you in hell chickenshit.
“Your wrong Sergeant,” Ray says defiantly to the corpse of his commander, “I’m not gonna die in this pit. My God is gonna save me! Yes He is!” Ray could hear the soldiers speaking the devil’s language getting closer. Ignoring the intense pain in his shoulder, he removes his backpack and helmet and pushes them into the darkest corner of the pit.
Hide! Ray hears God says to him.
“Yes Lord,” Ray answers, and he lay flat on his stomach and wriggles under the layers of wrapped bodies until he feels the linen getting damp. As he fights his way further and further downward into the layers of bodies stacked in the open grave, the cloth gives way and he is smothered by a warm slurry of decomposition. The weight of it bears down on him, crushing the breath from his lungs, and rendering him immobile. The maggots find him and began to feed, burrowing into the soft tissue of his pupils, fighting to fill his mouth, nose, and ears with their squirming bodies, seeking to consume his flesh, to transform him.
Ray’s mind, tittering on the edge of sanity, revolts. His body bucks and retches, struggling for air, he vomits a writhing mass of maggots from his mouth into the jello-like slurry. His arms and legs thrashed wildly, looking for purchase, searching for a surface to return to. God help me! I don’t want to die! I want to live! I want to live!
Suddenly, a hand grasps his wrist.
And God spoke to him. Do not fear, God said, for you are Mine and I will be with you always.
Though his eyes are gone, the face of God is revealed to him. He feels the warmth of Her light on his face and the breath of her forgiveness on his soul. And through his anguish, he feels calm. Her touch washes the weight of his sins away, and he is set free.
38
Crystal felt an abrupt and disconcerting shift in her being, like she was dropping over the first hill of a rollercoaster ride. Her stomach flipped and she closed her eyes to fight off the nausea. When she opened them again she wasn't sitting next to Moji any longer, but lying on her back, gazing up at a dull red midday sun suspended in the sky like a molten beach ball floating in a bright pink sea. Where am I? She'd done enough of her kid’s science homework to know that the sun wasn't that color nor was it that big in the sky. A cold gust of wind passed over her, carrying with it a familiar smell—a toxic mix of sour milk, piss, and stale beer. The aroma triggered a very specific memory—hopscotch in the courtyard of the Warren Street housing project.
She sat up and wrapped her arms over her chest, rubbing her upper arms vigorously with her hands to fight off the chill. She was sitting in the middle of the courtyard. The sun cast an eerie maroon patina over the cookie cutter buildings that lined both sides of the street, washing out their detail. This is not real, she thought, either I'm dreaming or I'm having one hell of a hallucination. She pinched a hunk of flesh from her forearm between her thumb and index finger hard enough to make her eyes water. The scenery didn't change. So I'm hallucinating. She stood up. There was a slight breeze blowing across her back. It would gust then fade, blowing loose dirt and trash across the courtyard, funneling it into a black void directly ahead of her, a bleak, dark rip in the fabric of this dream, in stark contrast to its blurred surroundings.
It was the alleyway. It breathed as though it were alive.
The alley’s opening looked like the gaping maw of some great beast, a black cavernous hole, it's breath fresh with the smell of her childhood, a smell that called forth long forgotten memories of despair, guilt, and loss. Scarred, dead trees formed the alley’s gnarled roof, their leafless limbs weaved tightly together to block any light from reaching its interior. Sunlight seeped the into tree's crevices, dripping through the alley's canopy, until it resembled a bloodied crown of thorns. And perched at the mouth of the alley, tucked in its lower jaw like a festering abscess, was the dumpster.
Though she was afraid, more afraid than she has ever felt, Crystal walked toward the alley, her legs moving of their own accord, almost against her will, toward the black beast of her nightmares, toward it's stinking breath and yawning, trash-filled mouth, to the edge of the void. She squatted near the base of the dumpster, and she opened her
mouth, unaware of the words she was about to speak.
“Champ? Dusty? Are you in there?” she said. She waited for what seemed to her an eternity, staring at the piles of garbage and decay, looking for signs of movement, before standing up and backing away from the dumpster, not sure of what to do next.
“Crystal!” someone behind her said, “You looking for this stray?”
Crystal was stunned by the sound of the familiar voice. It can't be her, she thought, she’s dead. She turned, and was startled and frightened by what she saw. It was her mother, Lucille, or Miss Lucy as she was called by the kids in the neighborhood, standing in the middle of the courtyard with a half-cocked smile hanging from her dry, crusted lips, looking just as mean, resentful, and sad as the day Crystal walked out of her life. She was dressed exactly the same as Crystal remembered that day, wearing a pair of well-worn black flats, a plain burgundy house dress, and a red, white, and blue apron with the words SUPER MOM! stenciled across the breast, stained with the residue of countless ruined meals. But it was who she was with that made Crystal’s heart skip in her chest; her mother had Dusty, the dog she loved and cared for when she was a child, cradled in her arms.
“Momma?” Crystal said, bewildered.
“Who the hell do you think I am, Jesus Christ?”
Crystal's hands began to tremble. “Ok ok,” she said to herself, “you’re not real. None of this is real! I'm just hallucinating.”
“Who you calling a hallucination?” her mother said, “We is all here child! You, me and this mutt of yours.”
Crystal bent down and held out her arms. “Dusty!” she said, “Come here boy, come to me!”
Dusty’s ears perked up slightly at the sound of his name but otherwise he didn't move.
“Don’t look like this alley mutt is paying you much mind,” her mother said, “not that I'm surprised. What did I always tell you Crystal? You can't trust anyone or anything that comes out of that alley.” As she spoke, her mother began to pet Dusty, raking her fingers, with nails much longer than she remembered, through his hair, starting at the top of his head and finishing at the base of his tail. Each stroke was rougher than the last, until Dusty began to whimper and yelp in pain.
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