Every Dark Little Thing

by T. S. Ward

  I peer over my shoulder at him, and I decide right then and there what I need. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to say his name again, but it comes out sharp and venomous, and I suspect it always will. “I’m gonna kill Ezra. That’s what I need.”

  Fox is quiet for a second. “Macon, he does things different here, I don’t know… maybe talk to him about that. I know they aren’t friendly. And we’ve got all your stuff here for now. We’ll set you up with a room—”

  “I don’t want a room,” I growl, “Don’t want people.”

  “Then I’ll arrange that.”

  I don’t say anything else, other than a short grunt when Fox asks if I want some privacy to get dressed in my own clothes. My own clothes, that are all clean and still somewhat warm and smell a little like smoke. And my jacket. All the bloods been scraped out of the creases and seams, but the patches are stained thoroughly.

  I get dressed achingly slow. My back is killing me. My leg has some tingling, some numbness, and I’m limping a little. Every time I blink, I’m looking up at my baby sister hanging over the edge of the scaffolding, her blood dripping in my eyes, staining my teeth.

  I am drowning in it, just like he said.

  The stairs creak under me. I open the door slowly and peer out, fully ready to see Ezra standing on the other side, fully terrified that he’ll drown me in even more blood, doesn’t matter whose. Terrified that he’s found Soldier, that he’ll use him for it.

  I wish I had my old journal, so I could go back and read the parts with him in it. The whole goddamn thing, because I only ever wrote about him, really.

  Fox is waiting on the other side of the door. He sees my eyes darting and holds his hands up. “It’s alright. You’re alright. You’re safe.”

  “I have to go. I have to find Soldier,” I say, and it’s so much meeker out loud. Fox stops me on my way to the door. “No, I have to—he doesn’t know. He won’t know not to—no, no, no, no, no, I have to, I have to find him—”

  There’s an image of Soldier in my head that knocks me to my knees, that takes all the air from my lungs, and crumples me like paper. I grit my teeth and cry, bent over on the ground with Fox kneeling next to me, his hand rubbing my back.

  He tries to talk to me. Tries to tell me that everything is okay, but there’s Ben Daniels, vibrant in my head, with Ezra pulling a knife across his throat. There he is, cut wide open, gasping, eyes rolling to the whites. Convulsing. Going still. His blood soaking me to the bone.

  Just like her.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Fox murmurs. He’s got an arm around my shoulders. “Take a deep breath. Breathe, kid, breathe. That’s it. There you go. Let’s slow down. Take it easy. Come sit down and we’ll talk about it. We’ll make a plan. Alright?”

  He calms me down like that, and helps me up, and then I see his entire goddamn family sitting in awkward silence around the kitchen table. Viking, too, with his arm around his husband.

  “Hey, Ghostie,” he says to me, and he holds out his arms as I walk over to him, hugging me tight.

  When I step back, he smiles, turns me around, and pushes me toward Fox and the living room. We sit on the couches. Viking on the loveseat with his husband, Fox cross legged on the opposite end of the couch from me.

  I’m still twitching. Still eyeing up all the people squashed into the kitchen. They look like they range from twelve to twenty-five, Charlotte blending in with the oldest of them.

  “Who is Soldier?” Fox asks tentatively.

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “Ben. Ben Daniels.”

  “The one from the list?” Viking asks, and I nod. “I thought you were done with him.”

  “Well, I fucking lied, didn’t I?” I bite the words at him. Snarl them. I feel like some feral animal caged, cornered, trapped, defending my Soldier. “Thought I was there just for the fuck of it, yeah? Just for fun, right? Thought I wandered into that bastard’s path purely accidentally? No. No, I had a reason, like you said. A little fucking nine-year-old reason.”

  They’re both quiet for a while.

  Viking clears his throat. “Is that why you were… the way you were, when you came in? He did something to your kid?”

  “Sister,” I correct him. “He knew the whole time.”

  I pull my knees close to my chest and try to stare at something that will wash out the image in my head. A colourful book on the coffee table.

  There’s a silence so thick it’s inside my lungs.

  “And what about Ben?” Fox asks quietly. “Where is he?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. But if he gets to Ezra… If Ezra sees him, he’ll kill him.”

  “You want to find him first,” he says.

  I nod, wiping my eyes, and take a deep breath. And then another. Just like Adam. Over and done with. Move on. Move on. Move on.

  And then, just like that, I’m back to myself. I’m walled off. I’m steeled. I’m more pissed than anything. I am myself again, and I think they all see it, I think they all see the sudden change and the sudden difference in me. They all look uncomfortable as hell.

  “Do you know where he might be?”

  “No,” I say softly, hands curled into fists against my thighs. “I can think of a few places he might be, but… no.”

  Fox nods. “Well, then, we’ll talk to Macon.”

  “Right. So where the fuck is he?” I stand up and start toward the door. “And where’s the rest of my shit?”

  As it turns out, Macon isn’t even here right now. He’s out with his main group, the ones he started this whole thing with, although a few of them are still here.

  As it turns out, Fox sent someone with all my shit to an empty house a little further out in the community from most people. A handful of neighbours dotted along, spread out, but none immediately. Viking says they can’t guarantee it’ll always be like that.

  There’s no ETA on when Macon will be back, which makes me shifty. What if he doesn’t come back? He will, they say. Nothing’ll take Macon down. Nothing but himself.

  “Sounds like me,” I mumble.

  “Sounds like the two of you will get along quite well,” Viking says.

  I shrug. “Based on past history with people who are like me, I doubt that very much. Too much head for one room. That’s what she said.”

  He snorts, and Fox just gives me a narrow-eyed look.

  The house isn’t spectacular—except, for my standards of tent and double-wide trailer, shit’s a damn castle. It’s even nicer than the one Soldier lived in. Detached rather than sandwiched between two others. Suburban as all hell. The siding is a robin’s egg blue, with white trim, and the door is this obnoxious yellow-orange that stands out.

  I miss the farmhouse. I miss those cabins. Hell, I even miss Soldier’s place and the room I slept in, back when I wasn’t even sure any of this was really happening.

  But it’s mine, and mine alone, for now. And it’ll do.

  Fox and Viking stand in the kitchen, waiting around for me to tell them to fuck off, pointing out things that I already noticed on the way here and things I probably wouldn’t give any thought to.

  “There’s a school down the road and to the left when you hit the main entrance. It’s where we gather for meetings and meals. Of course, you don’t have to eat with everyone if you don’t want to. Someone will drop off some supplies for you here.”

  “The perimeter is reinforced through all the outer backyards and patrolled by multiple groups at all hours. Barricades are up around all incoming streets and static patrols posted on those.”

  “Everyone has basic jobs, but everyone gets put on patrol once in a while. We rotate jobs every week.”

  “Viking and I are in the greenhouse this week.”

  “I am not a fan, but it’s what we’ve got to do.”

  Eventually, I kick them out, and I tell them I don’t want anyone around unless it’s this Macon. I don’t want to be anywhere near anyone. I’d rather be alone. I’d rather figure out how to kill Ezra and fi
nd Soldier on my own, with space to think. Ezra, and then Soldier. In that order. It’ll be safer for him then.

  A few hours later someone knocks on the door and I find a box sitting on the welcome mat. It’s heavy, loaded with cans and dry shit. Rice. Pasta. There’s a whole damn bottle of red wine that I pull out, crack open, and drink all in one sitting.

  I always liked the way wine drunk felt over whiskey drunk or beer drunk. Like warmth. Like a soft summer afternoon. It makes me feel the way Soldier makes me feel.

  So, I drink the whole thing and I fall asleep on the couch, under a quilt I took off one of the beds. And I dream about him. In a good way. Not in worry or fear.

  Day Twenty-Five

  It takes a week for Macon to show up, and I’ve been in this house the whole damn time. Other than the occasional walk around the streets at night, I’ve stayed inside and in the backyard. I’ve burned the personal effects of the previous occupants, found a guitar and some books to keep me occupied. There’s a bar and a home gym in the basement.

  Honestly, this place is a castle, and I am the goddamn dark wizard residing in the spindly tower.

  There’s a knock on the door while I’m in the middle of setting up a Rube Goldberg machine. The classic type, with a ping pong ball, using the stairs and a stack of cards and some empty tubes of paper towel and a few books.

  I open the door on my way by, tiptoeing down the hall.

  “Careful, Fox,” I say.

  The man clears his throat. “I’m not Fox.”

  I stop, turn around, and squint at him. “Pick up my jacket.”

  He raises an eyebrow. One hand rests casually on his hip as he reaches out and lifts it off the hook. A slow smile crosses his face when he sees the fishing line drop from where it was held taut under the weight, and the chain reaction that starts upstairs that sends the ping pong ball down the steps.

  “Impressive,” he says, watching the ball go its course. He inspects the back of my jacket before putting it back on the hook. “This is… familiar. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a grenade, would you? A smoke bomb?”

  The corner of my mouth twitches. “No grenades, no.”

  He barks a laugh in response. He’s got both hands resting loosely on his hips. He isn’t a large man, but he takes up space, the way he’s standing there. “Right. Right. Guess there’s some other girl out there doing things like this with grenades.”

  “Must be,” I say, tight-lipped.

  “So, you’re Ghost.” He nods as he takes a step forward, but he pauses when I jump back, even though I don’t mean to. “Except, that’s not what your friends Fox and Viking called you. They told us their story when we took them in. They called you Squirrel. Said they abandoned you, but left you with directions here. How come it took this long?”

  A thin smile is the only response I offer.

  “I see,” he hums. He looks away for a second, chewing on his lip, and then looks back to me as he takes another step down the hall. “You show up here soaked in blood looking for people you were with once upon a time, knowing they were here. I’m just trying to decide whether you’re here for protection, or whether you’re here working for Ezra. I hear you’re pretty close to him. I hear—”

  “The only thing you should hear is that he’s going to die,” I say, voice hoarse.

  I don’t like hearing about myself from someone else. I don’t like how open Fox and Viking have been with him. I don’t want to know that he heard I had some goddamn panic attack or that I was walking around with a limp or some shit. What I want to hear is that I’m about to be given a small army to go and take the guy out.

  Macon looks at me, tilting his head. His eyes squint. “No one’s going to die.”

  “Now, don’t tell lies.” I copy that look he’s giving me and put some sweetness in my words. “Everyone’s gonna die someday, just that Ezra’s gonna die a little sooner than most.”

  He opens his mouth, and then looks down, toeing at something on the floor. “That may be, but I’m not about to make it happen, and especially at risk to my people. That’ll include you, if you’re staying here. We do things a little differently here. A little more civilised than jumping straight to murder.”

  I move further into the kitchen and put the kettle on. The stove and the furnace are the only things hooked up to the generator. I call back to him as I pull out some chamomile tea and some honey. “How is it you do things here, then?”

  He’s already standing at the end of the hall. “We have community meetings to decide the big things.”

  “It’s no big thing, really,” I say, pushing myself up onto the counter. “Just one small man.”

  “Just one small man, huh?” He scratches his chin and crosses his arms. “Alright. So you kill one small man. What about the next one? And the next one? There’s always bad men, but that doesn’t mean you have to be.”

  A small smile twitches at the corner of my mouth. “I’m not a man, Micky. I am well aware it adds up. I have killed to stay alive. What I don’t do is kill for the sake of killing, or for the sake of manipulating eight hundred people into doing what I want. I do not pick random, innocent people under my protection and stab them over and over again in front of the whole goddamn fucking—whatever. Whatever. What. Ever. Let him live until there’s no one left. Get out.”

  He stares at me for a while as the kettle starts to sputter, and then glances back down the hall. “That saying on your jacket. What does that mean?”

  “I said, get out.”

  He doesn’t move. “Look. I’ll talk about it with the others. But don’t hold your breath. Were it entirely up to me, I might say yes.”

  I frown. “You’re the boss man, aren’t you?”

  Macon just smiles and walks away.

  —

  That night, Fox drags me out of the house, his oldest kid in tow. Vanessa. She looks like him, when she’s not standing next to Charlotte looking like a damn clone of her.

  I’m too tired to try and fight him about it, so I trudge along in silence, vaguely aware that we’re on the route they said to take if I wanted to join a community meal or meeting.

  There are flocks of people heading there, too. It sets me on edge immediately, makes me nervous as hell, because it reminds me of the first night on base and all the other nights. All of Ezra’s demonstrations sinking knives into the innocent.

  Fox looks over his shoulder at me and frowns. “You got that look on you, Squirrel.”

  “Ghost,” Vanessa corrects him.

  “Ghost. You look like you’re about to lose it. You alright?”

  I shrug and grit my teeth. “Yeah, just looks familiar, you know?”

  A grim look passes over him as he looks around at all the people. “I can assure you, it’s not. No one’s getting stabbed tonight. No one’s getting… it might feel the same, but it isn’t. Trust me. I had the same thought.”

  “If it’s too much, just let me know,” Vanessa offers. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  We wait for the crowd to flow in, wait until there are only a few stragglers standing around in the cold having chats and cigarettes, and then we step through the glass doors.

  A banner on the wall over a trophy case declares home of the Lakeside Warriors! Everything’s lit up by electric lanterns and construction lights wired up by orange and yellow extension cords and small generators stuck into the corners. There’s someone pouring a canister of gasoline into one of them, nearly hidden in a shadowed corner.

  The last time I was in a school, I was with Adam for Sadie’s parent-teacher interview shit. Every time the teacher laid out a concern about something she’d done, I had to put a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. I was a bad influence, to say the least.

  The cafeteria looks very familiar. Especially with Macon and his crew at a head table. Shit looks like the goddamn last supper.

  “What the fuck,” I say under my breath.

  There’s Macon, and beside him some red-haired girl fro
wning at a couple kids playing along the wall behind them. Two empty seats next to her. There’s a man missing half an arm with unruly white hair. Beside him, there’s a woman who, admittedly, looks like a total badass. A scar down her cheek, a gun on the table in front of her, and makeshift armour.

  Fox and Vanessa lead me to a bench along a wall of windows where the end of the food line is, moving quickly. They join it, but I sit down, back to the glass, legs crossed, and look out over the room.

  “Ghost?” Fox looks back at me.

  “Not hungry,” I tell him with a forced smile. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna run off. My tolerance for stupid shit is higher than most.”

  He laughs. “That’s because you’re the one doing the stupid shit.”

  That makes me laugh, makes me glad I’ve got him and Viking here. I sit there and watch the crowd while they’re off getting food, watch all the smiling faces and listen to the laughter and the sounds of people generally having a good time.

  A handful of them look at me nervously, and maybe I recognize some of their faces, and maybe they recognize me. Maybe my reputation precedes me.

  There’s Ezra’s red right hand.

  It just makes me want to get out of here even more.

  Macon’s people are watching me, too. That red-head is eyeing me the hardest, forgetting to lift her fork all the way to her mouth for it.

  “Brought you some food,” Vanessa says, appearing beside me suddenly. She holds out a plate that I take and hold on my lap. “I know you said you’re not hungry, but trust me. This is Jez’s cooking and she might not be back in the kitchen for weeks. If there’s a day to not be hungry, it’s tomorrow, when Tosh is chef. Avoid that at all costs.”

  I see Fox sitting down at a table with his family and Viking, and then look that girl in the eye when I see she’s still staring at me. She looks away immediately.

  “Who’s the shortcake?”

  Vanessa looks around for a second before she sees the girl staring over the rim of a cup. “Oh. That’s Jenny. She’s been with Macon since the start.”