by Iris Astres
Rocco sniffed and swallowed down a sour taste, remembering that bitch. He’d never liked her much, and after their last conversation, he could say he liked her even less. That prissy little garden with the monument to Cy all front and center. As if the two of them had had some fairy-tale marriage. Disgusting. Shameless. She’d sucked the old man’s dick to do him in and get his loot. And now she had some city stud holed up with her in the dead man’s house.
Sometimes he swore the world was too disgusting to stand upright in. Rocco turned in a circle looking at what had become of town. Everything run-down, the houses barely better than shacks. Rust-covered, pieced-together vehicles were all anyone drove these days, ugly two-tone, four-tone fuckers parked any old way around his pristine bike.
Their side had won the war, goddammit. What had happened to their self-respect? Their dignity? It was time they all started to act like men. Rocco didn’t give a shit about Backusians, but Earth First definitely had one thing right: to get things done, they had to band together. Aliens were just one rallying point. There were others. For example, every man inside that bar had been fucked over by a woman—divorced and left. Even smart-ass college boy had gotten his engagement ring mailed back to him by whoever he’d been going to marry. Rocco turned around and headed back into the bar. No doubt Jim and Charlie would be interested to know the widow Kelley was back in the market for a man. Hell, maybe they should pay a friendly call. Let her know she was on everyone’s mind. That her good buddies down the road were watching out for her.
Chapter Eleven
The motorcycle was the loudest. The other rumbling engines blended in with one another. Were there three of them? Four? Even more than that? Just one at this hour would be bad enough.
Dinah’s heart was hammering, her consciousness still crawling its way out of sleep. She pushed her torso upward and was instantly dragged backward off the bed onto the floor. “Quiet.” Malcolm yanked her farther from the windows. The unpolished wood was hard and cold on her bare skin, displaced dust an irritant to her already tightening throat. The arms around her were so hot it frightened her. She’d seen what men could do in such a rage.
“Stay here.” She watched his shadow cross into the kitchen. He pulled Cy’s service weapon from the drawer and moved toward the door.
“Don’t,” she croaked, not certain what she meant to warn against. Don’t go out there. Don’t confront them. Don’t get hurt. Definitely the latter. She pulled her shaking body upward, crawling toward Malcolm, hoping somehow she could keep him safe.
There were voices coming closer now, the low, rumbling sound of determined men. How many of them, ten? Could there be more? Oh Jesus, go away.
The sound of breaking glass confused her. Before she could make sense of it she heard the shots and knew Malcolm was firing. She recognized the hollow thuck of the Rockwell. Dinah pulled herself toward him, hoping against hope that he’d been right and that the shots would frighten them away. She knelt beside him, peering through the exposed corner of the window at just the moment when the panicked male voices rose into shouts. Calmly Malcolm fired three more shots. Two men went down. She saw it with her own unblinking eyes.
“What are you doing?” Dinah grabbed at him and found his body hard as stone.
Horror squeezed the words out of her throat, sounding barely human. She got her arms around his neck and pulled with all her strength, yanking at his ear and kicking hard. “Stop it!”
Dinah pulled at his resistance until there was a shifting of the tide and he was pulling her. Before she could react, he had her turned, her back to him. One arm was underneath her armpits, and he was dragging her, no matter how she kicked and pressed her bare feet into the rough floor.
She was caught up in a whirling tide of anger, blown so far off course from anything she recognized that even if she could resist, what would she hope for? What would she fight for? Which way was safety? Justice?
For an instant, Dinah saw the ugly, bubbling shape of the black Rockwell on the floor beside her, and then the door into her closet was flung open. He shoved her headfirst into it, picked up the gun, and came in after her. Darkness closed around them both. Dinah struggled for control. She pulled something from underneath her and scooted backward into the thick forest of her coats. She managed one breath. Two. The smell of cloth and dust and old shoes curled around her. The choke of the indoors and darkness—too many evil omens for one night. She heard Malcolm fumbling and went tense. She knew what it would be, before he slid the Luger over to her.
“Stay here.”
She grabbed his neck again and pulled and kicked until he turned and knocked her down to lie on top of her. His skin was burning hot, on fire. Was he sick? Or only mad? She herself was chattering with cold.
“Dinah, please.”
She couldn’t see him. There was no light in the closet, but the sound of him, the feel of him was something to hold on to. The wind of fear and panic let her go. She came down from the storm and landed, someplace awful but with him.
“Why did you kill them?” The sound of her own high-pitched whisper, hoarse and garbled with her tears, made Dinah stop herself and grit her teeth. “They might have gone away. I might have talked them out of this.” She might have. She might have.
Malcolm grabbed her shoulders. Maybe he could see her with those eyes of his. She was completely blind. “They were splitting up,” he said. “Half coming to the front, the others sneaking to the back. Think what that means. This is no social call. They were coming for you. Either I kill them, or they kill us. Those are the choices. We don’t have any others.” He lifted himself off her and touched her face. “I won’t let them hurt you, which means I can’t let them kill me. We can die together here and now. That I could accept. But if you want to live, it means death is theirs. You have to choose.”
Her stomach lurched. Her throat tightened to keep bile down. Somehow Dinah whispered, “I don’t want to die.”
The sound of gunfire made her press backward, all but hidden by her clothes. They both heard people on the back porch a few feet away. “Stay here,” Malcolm said, and she wanted to. But she wasn’t a child to die hiding in a closet.
She heard the whistling of hunters, which meant in their eyes she was an animal to be taken down. She could almost see them making loops and circles with their fingers, organizing themselves for the kill. Some of them at least. There were the dead ones, don’t forget. There were the ones who thought they’d all be having fun.
She stood up and pulled on a shirt and pants. She picked her Luger up and thumbed off the safety, the way Cy had made her do a thousand times. Calmly, she stepped from the closet and stood waiting for a stranger to come through one of her doors.
Malcolm had positioned himself in the bathroom. She heard the tinny thuck again. There was another shout, the sound of bodies falling. His naked body sprinted past her, back to the front of the house.
Dinah stood in the center of the cabin and looked right and left. If they come through this door, I’ll shoot. If they come through that door, I’ll shoot. An engine started. Bright headlights made a crazy silvery path crawl over the far wall. Only one car this time. She half expected they would ram the house. They might have done that from the start. A thousand ways she could be dead, but she was still alive. Malcolm was still alive, his body tense and deadly by the door. The lone car pulled away. She listened till she couldn’t hear the engine anymore. More stillness. Total silence. Malcolm put the gun down on the table. He stepped into his pants and pulled his sweater on.
“Are they gone?” Her croaky whisper sounded wrong. She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes. When she could focus again, she looked around her at her house.
Her home. The place she’d lived for seven years. Her best memories were here. The only future she enjoyed imagining was tied to this place too. Her gaze traveled from Cy’s chest to her kitchen, pausing at the wall in front of her. The holes were still there from Cy’s ugly mounted fish. He gave in to her ple
nty, but there’d been no way she could talk him into taking that thing off the wall. The week after he’d died, she’d made a point of putting it out in the shed and told herself it was the merry side of widowhood. Right. That night she’d grieved the empty wall along with her dead husband.
Dinah slid down to the floor and sat with her head pressed into her knees. This was it now. This part of her life was over. No rape, no shotgun marriage to some toothless fool. There were corpses littering her garden. Fouling everything. The end of Eden. Banished by the smooth seduction of a snake.
Malcolm held his hand to her. She blinked at it and didn’t move.
“I have to go outside,” he said. “If I don’t come back in a few minutes, you can assume there’s something’s wrong. If anyone but me comes near you, shoot to kill.” She stared at him, heart speeding up again.
“They’re gone for now. They’ll need time to regroup but keep your guard up. We don’t know who these men are.”
“I know who they are,” said Dinah. “They’re idiots. They’re Rocco, different shapes and sizes. Oh God.” She pulled herself into a ball. Had they just murdered Gordon’s father? That poor kid. Come back, Joanne. Come back and take him someplace better. A life up north with teachers, other kids. There was that chance at least.
Malcolm took a step toward the door.
“Wait.” Dinah got to her feet. “Where are you going? If there’s someone out there, why give them something to shoot at?”
“I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to. If they’re gone, we’re going too. Now. Grab some things. Important papers, pictures, enough clothes for a few days. Some food and water. Whatever you think you’ll need.” She stood up, and he kissed her on the forehead. She let him touch her face and pull her into him, but she could feel her spirit rising out of her and disappearing in the air like smoke.
He turned away.
She watched his body fade into the night.
Chapter Twelve
They’d taken someone’s truck. An ancient black monstrosity with torn upholstery that reeked of mayonnaise and sweat. Whose it was, she couldn’t say. A dead man. That much she did know.
Dinah had insisted she would drive. The whole way she was rigid, sick, the muscles in her neck drawn tight as bricks. Staring down the asphalt kept her dry-eyed, which was the one thing she was clinging to.
The old interstate stretched dully between rocky hillsides. Malcolm spotted remnants of burned-out cars, but otherwise no sign of any danger lingering from Earth First’s supposed coup. They stopped once—coffee and bathroom. That was all. No words. No sound. No memorable event. Just one long journey, leading away from Dinah’s ruined life toward a future she could not bear thinking of.
Twenty miles south of Jackson City, the landscape gradually began to change. More cars, more lights, more everything. Malcolm used that hated black square drawn from his pants’ pocket to guide her to the exit. They made their way down a wide street and stopped in front of an enormous block of buildings, square and white like teeth.
Dinah stepped out of the car and looked around. The place was landscaped—she was pretty sure that’s what they called it. Tiny, walled-in areas of rock and wood chips housed waxy ferns and palm fronds strewn with lights. At some point they passed by a waterfall, some sort of pond, all of it fake and clean and ugly.
Malcolm forged ahead, seemingly invigorated by it all. This was what he liked, what he was used to. She let the distance grow between them.
I can’t. The thought was spiraling inside her like a siren. An alarm. This wasn’t a good place for her to be
They went inside a sort of lobby, vast and empty with high ceilings. A large bouquet sat in the center of a frigid entryway, sterile in its scentless beauty. Ugly.
Malcolm touched her lower back, and she looked up to see two people coming toward them. Dinah recognized the man. She’d seen his picture on the infoscreen the day that she’d first seen the stories of the bombing at the Body House and decided she would volunteer.
“This is Amin and Solange Clay,” Malcolm said.
“Hi,” said Dinah. It was not a very robust salutation. Solange smiled graciously, then pulled Malcolm into her arms. When she released him, she was smiling with such delight that Dinah wanted suddenly to slap her. Amin placed himself between his merry wife and Dinah’s rigid body as she waited blankly through the conversation. “Settle in and rest,” he finally said, eyeing her carefully. “Tomorrow there’ll be time to talk.”
She let herself be led by Malcolm up some stairs, then down two different hallways. The thick patterned carpet muffled the sound of their footsteps. Her inner siren, on the other hand, was getting louder. More persistent.
I can’t do this. I can’t stay here.
He made her use her thumb to open the door. Pointless progress, airless sterile space. She stepped inside. There was a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bath. All of it extremely elegant and extremely wrong.
“I asked for green.” Malcolm came and stood behind her, speaking in her ear.
“Thanks.” She took in the lush furnishings inside the ornate cube.
It was awful. All of it completely awful. After a night’s sleep she would go home again. She’d walk there if she had to. She’d go back and live there until somebody killed her. Better that than a bland beige season living in a decorative slab. Dinah’s stomach flipped. Her eyes were swimming. Her throat was rasping with the manufactured air. Too much. I won’t get through this.
Malcolm touched her back again.
“You have to go,” she said, turning reluctantly to face him.
He faltered slightly when he met her gaze. His body tensed. He didn’t say a word.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” He looked bewildered by the word. Later she would certainly regret this moment and wish they’d had the tender separation they deserved. Right now, however, there were so many emotions swimming through her that she couldn’t hope to piece apart which one was sorrow, which one horror, which one love.
Malcolm looked from her face to the four walls around him, at a loss. “This is only for a day or two,” he told her carefully. ”When there’s time, we’ll find a better place.”
“I’m sorry, Malcolm. I’m sure I sound awful and ungrateful.”
“Do you think I want your gratitude?”
“What do you want?” She stopped him from speaking, her hand on his lips. “Don’t bother telling me, because I know that I don’t have it. Whatever it is, I can’t oblige. There’s no point in your staying here, and anyway, I want to be alone.” She heard how graceless she was being; she knew it, and she knew it would only get worse, which was why she needed to get him away from her. Too much meant darkness, solitude, or some horrible scene. She wouldn’t risk bad memories of him beyond what they’d already been through. The good days she held in her heart were too precious to endanger.
“You have to go.”
Malcolm took a step backward and glanced toward the door. His face was very pale. “I’ll come back later.”
“Don’t come back,” she said. I won’t be here. Awful. She was being awful, and she couldn’t even look at him. She stepped out of her shoes and made quick work of taking off the rest. When she was naked, Dinah opened her small suitcase, fished out her robe, slipped it on.
“I’m not myself,” she said. “I actually don’t think I’m anyone. Who knows when I’ll be somebody again? It hurts to be with someone when you’re no one. That means you have to go.” She brushed one tear away and then another.
He was so straight. Why did he always get straighter when something was hurting him? And did his eyes have extra splinters in them, or did it only look that way because she’d started crying?
“There’s a place downstairs where you can send for me.”
“A place downstairs,” she echoed dully. She was not going to any place downstairs. She was going home. Home. She needed to be home. Even if she had to turn back time to get there.
“Tell me what I should have done.”
That again. She took a slow, shuddering breath. “For the last time, Malcolm, this has nothing to do with you. How could it? When the Outlands happened you were on another planet. When Cy died you were sex-doctoring in some big fancy brothel or whatever. What happened to me started long before you were dragged into it. You didn’t start it. You couldn’t fix it. You just had the lousy luck to have to see it. I wouldn’t even say you made it worse, despite the men you murdered on my lawn. Even if you ruined everything, I wouldn’t blame you.” God. How could she blame him? She put her arms around him, pressed her face into his chest.
When she felt his body shudder with relief, Dinah instantly regretted what she’d done. He held her tight, hands traveling slowly over her like he could mold the broken parts of her together. “I love you, Malcolm,” she said in a crumbling voice. “I love you, but I lost so much. I lost my house.” At least that’s what she’d tried to say. All that came out was a garbled, high-pitched wail. “My life is gone,” she said, calming herself, “and I feel like I’m going too. Please leave. I need to be alone.”
She walked him to the door. He grabbed the handle and stood very still. Her face was wet, her soul was sick, but she managed to look at him. This time there was disappointment added to the rest. The poor man had imagined she was better than she was.
“I don’t care how many times you’ve said it, Dinah. You’re wrong in thinking this has nothing to do with me. No matter when your troubles started, where I was and where you were, what happens to you happens to me too. I am involved. I am concerned.”
She nodded, sighed. It didn’t change a thing.
