Echoes (US Edition)

by Laura Tisdall

  Time.

  That’s all they need.

  Just more time…

  ‘I…’ she stammers. The Asker flicks the safety off the gun. ‘Maybe I could recreate – ’

  There’s a loud thump from living room.

  ‘What was that?’ says Scarlet. No other sounds follow. The Asker and Scarlet glance across at each other. He edges towards the door.

  ‘Tower?’ he hisses through the wood. ‘Sneak? Tower?’ There’s no answer. ‘Who’s there? Who is it? We have a gun!’ Still no answer. Mallory feels the briefest spark of hope. Maybe, just maybe…

  Oh please, please, please…

  Scarlet takes the BB gun out of her back pocket.

  ‘Weevil,’ The Asker calls, yelling towards the back door now. ‘Weevil!’

  ‘Yeah, what?’ Weevil says, hurrying out of the utility room a few seconds later.

  ‘No answer from the others,’ Scarlet tells him. She looks at Mallory. ‘What did you do, you little shit? You send a message?’

  The Asker lifts the gun towards her.

  ‘Echo?’ he says, and the kitchen door bursts open. It slams into him, knocking him off his feet. His head smacks right into table, the gun clattering to the floor as another man barrels into the room. Scarlet screams and dives towards The Asker, while the new man charges straight at Weevil, punching him in the face, then dropping on top of him to hit him again. Warden tries to push himself up to help, almost toppling his chair backwards in the process. Mallory grabs hold and drags him back towards the corner of the room, away from the fighting, but she can’t take her eyes off the new man… She can’t…

  She can’t, because it’s Roger.

  He’s pounding in Weevil’s face, in his Slayer T-shirt and military-ironed jeans.

  ‘Roger?’ she stammers. He looks up. He sees her.

  ‘Run!’ he shouts. ‘Mallory, run!’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘You fucking bastard!’

  The world seems to slow. Mallory looks up, away from her dad, who is somehow there, and her eyes fall on Scarlet. She’s holding The Asker’s gun. He’s still on the floor, apparently knocked out cold, but Scarlet has the damn gun and she’s pointing it at Roger…

  At Mallory’s dad.

  Mallory dives towards her. They collide and fall. The wind sucks from her lungs as they smash into the tiles. Scarlet’s screaming curses but Mallory’s on top of her. She swings her fist and she connects with something important because the curses get louder, but the only thing she can think is, Where’s the gun, where’s the gun, where’s the –

  Scarlet’s looking up at her…

  And Mallory feels it then, beneath her, beneath her stomach…

  Scarlet fell, but she never dropped it.

  No, she thinks simply.

  Someone shouts her name…

  Then there is other shouting…

  The sounds of footsteps…

  It’s so noisy, but all Mallory hears, all she sees, is Scarlet – and all she feels is the metal of the gun beneath her. She reaches for it, but…

  ‘You don’t know what you’ve done,’ Scarlet spits. ‘Stupid little girl.’

  And she fires.

  Mallory’s body lifts off the ground a little, but she hears, more than feels the shot go off. Then arms grab hold of her and pull her backwards and her head is suddenly spinning…

  She feels okay, though. A little cold, maybe.

  It must have missed me, she thinks, relief fluttering. There are other people in the room now, people in navy jackets and helmets, with bigger guns than the one Scarlet was holding. Feds, Mallory realizes. They finally traced the virus. Took them long enough. She sighs. Or maybe they got here just in time? Because Scarlet must have missed and…

  And then she sees Roger.

  He’s on his knees, held back behind FBI agents who are crowding round her now. They look like they’re trying to talk to her but Mallory can’t hear the words. Maybe it’s the noise from the gun, still ringing in her ears, but…

  But…

  Roger is crying.

  His face is bright red and there are tears streaming down it. He’s looking down at her through the gaps in the navy holding him back, and he’s rocking back and forth…

  But…

  Hands are pushing down against her stomach. Mallory suddenly feels very sick, like she’s going to actually be sick. Her heart starts juddering and stuttering. It’s not a nice feeling. Her mouth fills with saliva, only it tastes of metal. And there’s too much of it. It’s filling up too quickly. She tries to spit it out, tries to breathe, but she almost chokes on the liquid. She starts retching. Roger is still rocking back and forth, tears still streaming.

  ‘Echo!’

  Sound returns in a single blast.

  Warden.

  She looks for him, but she can’t see where he is. Her eyes are all fuzzy, but she hears him again. He’s telling her to hold on, to ‘Just bloody hold on!’

  Hold on to what?

  He’s talking a mile a minute, like Warden does, and she’s trying to follow but suddenly there are too many sounds, too many noises… Everything becomes loud and piercing and confusing… And…

  Pain rips through her abdomen.

  Mallory screams, but she gags on the sound. Someone puts a breathing mask on her face. It feels like people are touching her everywhere. She feels herself lifted up…

  And then she sees it…

  A bullet hole in the ceiling, surrounded by a shimmer of red…

  Oh, she thinks dumbly. Oh no.

  ‘Echo!’ Warden screams again, but the sounds are fading away, almost as quickly as they came.

  Just like her vision…

  Just like everything, but the hurting inside…

  It hurts so bad…

  I’m going to die, she thinks, only this time she really knows it, and she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want…

  And her eyes are going dark…

  And she’s so damn scared…

  She’s never felt so scared…

  And then…

  Then…

  Nothing.

  Echoes

  Mallory is five years old.

  She’s sitting on a swing in a play park at Quantico that’s just down the road from the house they lived in when Roger was stationed at the Marine Corps Base there. Her dad is crouched in front of her. His hair is brown and curly, no sign of grey. Baby Jed is asleep in a stroller beside him.

  Roger is smiling at her.

  ‘How are you doing, honey?’ someone else asks, and for some reason that voice makes Mallory feel all caught up inside. She looks to the right, looks for the source. The sun flares in her eyes, but then she sees her, sees her mom sitting on the swing next to hers, in that white dress she used to wear a lot, with the little red flowers on it, all linked together by green stems. She looks so beautiful sitting there, all tanned skin and wide smile, long hair streaming out down her back. It’s not that fake blonde yet, but black, just like her daughter’s. She has the same big blue eyes, too. People are always saying how much they look like each other and Mallory likes it when they do because she likes feeling the same as Jeanie, feeling connected like that. Her mom’s expression is warm, looking down at her. And there is concern there…

  Mallory’s eyes fall on her own small hand gripping hold of the chain. It’s the middle of June and the sun is beating down on them, but both of her hands are wearing gloves. She used to make them go red raw washing them after using the swings. Usually she’s all right with inanimate objects, but something about knowing the chains had been gripped so tightly by so many others… it had made her skin feel like it was creeping with bugs. Her dad had come back with the gloves that afternoon, after he got off duty. He’d driven out to a camping store in Jacksonville to get them after he had the idea – no one else sells kids’ gloves in summer.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Mallory answers her mom, and she means it. She feels calmer than she usually does in the play park.
She even starts to swing a little. Jeanie laughs and the sound makes Mallory go warm inside, and Roger’s grinning at her mom, stepping back to give Mallory room. And he looks happy. He looks so very happy.

  And Mallory starts to smile too.

  She leans back on the swing, kicking her legs out and making herself go higher, high enough that her stomach drops on the way down. She likes the feeling. She kicks back again. She starts to laugh along with her mom. She wants to go higher. She pulls back harder…

  A pain tears through her middle.

  Mallory gasps and her eyes black out.

  No…

  This doesn’t belong here, not here, in this memory. Her hands let go of the chains and she starts to fall. She doesn’t like the feeling this time, but she keeps falling…

  And someone is shouting her name and telling her she needs to hold on, but there’s nothing to hold on to…

  And she just falls and falls and…

  ‘Mallory, we have to go. Mallory.’

  She opens her eyes. She’s seated on her parents’ bed back at home in Watertown. Jeanie is crouched in front of her, but she’s heavily made up now, thick foundation covering any trace of skin, and her hair is the brittle blonde she’d started dyeing it the year before she left. She still looks beautiful, though, wearing the purple and white dress that she liked because it hugged tight to her figure. Mallory remembers going with her to buy it for her friend Harriet’s wedding. They’d spent a whole morning looking round all the shops in town before driving out to Hartford when Jeanie had found nothing she liked. Mallory’s dress is purple too. Jeanie had said she looked pretty in it, but there’s the smallest spot of red blossoming out from the middle now, dyeing the fabric…

  ‘We have to go, honey,’ says Jeanie. ‘We’re going to be late.’

  ‘It hurts,’ Mallory tells her. The spot on her stomach is growing bigger. She puts her gloved hand against it to try and stop it.

  ‘Oh, honey,’ her mom says gently, taking a hold of her hand and drawing it towards her though Mallory tenses up. The bare fingertips are painted red. ‘You can’t keep acting like this,’ she continues, not seeming to see it. ‘People will think it’s strange. You’re a big girl now.’

  ‘Mom, it hurts – ’

  ‘You can’t wear these ugly things to a wedding,’ she says, her voice hardening. She starts to pull the glove off and a fear grips Mallory that is greater than the pain and her worry about the growing patch of red.

  ‘Please,’ she begins, even as the first glove disappears, leaving her skin bare and exposed.

  ‘Mallory Jeanette – ’

  ‘Please, Mom.’

  The second glove comes off. Mallory starts to shake. She can feel tears pricking her eyes, but she tries to hold it back because Jeanie doesn’t like it when she cries, especially not about this kind of thing. The door opens and Roger comes in. His hair is greying now and there are rings under his eyes that weren’t there before. He looks at Mallory, then at Jeanie, holding her gloves. He says something and Jeanie starts shouting. Mallory clenches her eyes shut, clenches her hands, clenches up her whole body, even though it hurts.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobs. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She wants to go back. She wants to go back to the play park and to the Jeanie who laughs and has hair that’s black like hers. She wants to go back to when her dad’s face wasn’t all lined and wrinkled and afraid. She wants to go back and stay five years old…

  Back before Roger went on that fourth tour, and then got sent home early, given a medal for something he wouldn’t talk about, and then discharged…

  Back before she realized him coming home early wasn’t a good thing and meant something had gone bad – even though he’d got that medal – and that, really, he would never quite come back at all, not the same anyway, hardly speaking a single word those first few months…

  Back before he wouldn’t tell her what had happened, wouldn’t tell her why he was different, though she asked and he’d never lied to her or hid things from her before…

  Back before her mom started fighting with him…

  Back before Jeanie started spending too much time down at the police station, saying she had patrol, when she didn’t…

  Back before that guy Lucas, a cop like she was, had started coming round more than he should, staying over when Roger was on shift, staying when he shouldn’t have… when he shouldn’t…

  Back before Roger realized what Jeanie was doing and pretended he didn’t, and Mallory didn’t know what to do… She didn’t know what to do…

  Back before her mom left…

  Before her dad let her go.

  She wants to stay five years old. Back when they were just Mom and Dad to her, and not two grown-ups who messed things up. Back when it never came into her head that there might be someone who meant more to Jeanie than the three of them. She wants to stay there. She wants to stay there not knowing it, wants to stay there not wondering if maybe it was because of her, too, that Jeanie left, because of her that Jed doesn’t have a real mom any more – because she wasn’t quite like other children, because she wasn’t really what Jeanie had wanted in a little girl of her own… Because she needed the gloves and never quite said the right things as she got older, though she tried to, she really tried… But she didn’t know what Jeanie wanted from her. Not really…

  Not really…

  And…

  It’s gone…

  It’s gone…

  It’s gone.

  ***

  Mallory wakes up gradually, drifting in and out of consciousness for a long time before she finally comes to. When she does, she feels groggy and nauseous, and her body aches with a bruised weariness that tells her not to move. It’s soft beneath her and there are covers above. She’s in a bed, but it’s not her own. She knows the feel of that. She blinks her eyes open, the lids fluttering cautiously at first, and sees a plain white ceiling. There’s a breathing mask on her face, the rubber pressing down against her skin. Too far to reach, though.

  Where…?

  Mallory turns her head slowly to the left – and it feels so sluggish – and she sees a bank of medical instruments; monitors, a drip bag… She’s in a hospital. It looks like it’s night time – the lights in her room are off, but she can just see from the glow of the fluorescents in the corridor beyond.

  How…?

  Questions trickle into her mind, but she can’t quite make sense of them. Her vision swims and she closes her eyes again. So very tired…

  Somewhere in the dimness, she remembers getting shot. She remembers being afraid, remembers thinking she was going to die. She remembers it hurting. It doesn’t hurt now, though, and she’s too sleepy to really feel afraid. She must be doped up on pain meds. She moves her left hand ever so slightly upwards from the mattress, feeling the tug of tubes in her skin and a plastic monitor clip on her index finger. She tries to shut those sensations out, disturbing though they are, and lifts higher… She finds bandages, lots of padding.

  She remembers the gun beneath her…

  The feeling of being lifted up…

  To her right, someone snores.

  Mallory turns her head again, having to think carefully about the movement, the mask shifting against her face. Roger is asleep in a chair by her bed.

  Roger…

  She sees him bursting through that door, then, knocking down The Asker, stopping Weevil…

  He looks exhausted too, these big great bags under his shuttered eyes, head lolled against his shoulder. There’s a nasty bruise on his right cheek, black and yellow, though, not the angry red of something new.

  How long…?

  He looks so different to the man who had smiled in her dream, slumped in that chair, forehead all wrinkled with worry lines that the memory didn’t have.

  But he still came for me.

  He came.

  ‘Dad,’ Mallory says, using that name for the first time in a long time. Her voice is hoarse and croaky, muffled b
y the mask, but he stirs a little at the sound. ‘Dad.’

  ‘Wha – ’ He wakes with a startled snort. Then he sees her looking at him and his face changes, furrowing with concern. ‘Mallory?’ he says, feverishly blinking away the sleep. ‘Mallory, you’re awake.’

  ‘Dad,’ she repeats, just saying the word – and she can see how it hits him then, see the breath he takes, the glass sheen that starts to form right away in his eyes. ‘You okay?’ she manages.

  ‘Yeah, kid,’ he answers, voice barely more than a whisper, ‘I’m okay.’

  And he came for her.

  He came for her.

  ‘Warden?’ she asks. He hesitates.

  ‘You mean Gilbert?’ She nods. ‘He’s all right too.’ Mallory feels a sharp relief, even in her drowsy state. ‘Needed surgery,’ he goes on, ‘but it all went fine. He’s fine.’

  He’s fine… Both fine… And Roger came…

  She closes her eyes a moment.

  ‘Sorry,’ she murmurs, ‘I’m so tired.’

  ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘hey, you don’t worry about that. You were… you were in the O.R. a long time and the doctor said you’ll be tired a long while ’cause of the anesthetic, and they got you on all these medications and things. You hurting now?’ he asks. ‘I can call someone if you – ’

  ‘No,’ she mumbles. ‘No.’ There are so many things she needs to ask, but it all feels too complicated. ‘You found me,’ she manages. She tries to think. The FBI must have finally traced the virus, but Roger…

  ‘Tracker on Jed’s phone,’ he says. ‘He turned it on soon as we left the house. Went dead around ten thirty. I tried calling you, but it went straight to voicemail. After the way you’d left… Took us an hour or so to get back to Watertown from the motel, and then the exhaust finally dropped and I had to tie it on with a coat hanger… I left Jed at Ruthie’s.’ He fumbles a little over that. Mallory hasn’t let them go to Ruthie’s in years, but it doesn’t really seem to matter so much just now – all she thinks is how Ruthie’s good at cooking, so Jed’ll be fine there for the moment. ‘Then I went to go see you were okay,’ Roger goes on. ‘I waited outside that house for a bit. I should have gone in sooner, but I didn’t know what was going on. Then I saw that guy out front with all the tattoos, casing the street. And I just started moving. It sort of happened before I could think it, and he was out cold on the ground and the front door was open. I guess you never forget the training.’ He looks up at her then, and his eyes are really glistening.