Ghosts

by David A. Robertson

  Cole felt like a zombie all over again. He wandered through the tents, trying not to fall into any of them, until he found the one he’d stayed in while he was healing. He fumbled with the flap, but managed to get it open, and collapsed inside as though he’d been pushed.

  He didn’t move, after he’d fallen onto the ground. He stayed where he was, on his side, facing a dwindling fire that had been started sometime during the night. He had one roommate in the small canvas dwelling, huddled under a blanket on the other side of the dying flames. Eva. She was asleep. He studied her face, every detail of it, so carefully that he could count her eyelashes. He studied her face until his eyelids grew heavy, until he lost the fight to keep them open.

  22

  BY THE FIRE

  COLE WOKE UP GASPING FOR BREATH. He’d been having a nightmare. Dead again. Waking up from an eternal sleep. Emerging from eternity confused and broken and lost. Trying to suck air into decayed lungs. Clawing at the coffin to get out, to get here. He opened his eyes, and patted the ground around his body to reacquaint himself with reality. He felt his body, from his legs to his face, to make sure that he was alive and still healed. He looked at his scars. He looked to the side, where the fire was burning confidently, and where Eva was sitting cross-legged, watching him. A blanket draped over her shoulders and a cup of tea in her hands.

  “Morning,” she said.

  Cole tried to gauge the time by the light coming in through the cracks in the tent.

  “Or should I say afternoon,” she added.

  “Care to be more specific?”

  “Just about two.”

  “Two?” Cole sat up, rubbed his face. “Why’d you let me sleep that long?”

  “Because you needed it.”

  “I can’t sleep when people are sick. Dr. Captain and Elder Mariah were probably up all night. Brady, too.”

  Eva sipped her tea. “You needed rest. You were out all night protecting us, weren’t you?”

  “Everybody here did something to protect Wounded Sky last night. Lauren and I pretty much just walked through the woods.”

  “You got shot before that. Like, a million times.”

  Cole shrugged.

  “I rest my case.”

  Eva reached across the fire and handed Cole the tea. He accepted it and took a long sip. The moment the liquid slid down his throat, his stomach growled embarrassingly loud.

  “Sorry.” Cole blushed.

  “When’s the last time you ate?”

  Cole thought about this, but couldn’t recall. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, so…” She stood up, as much as the tent allowed. “…you need to eat. We need you strong. I mean, that’s relative. Strong for you. Like, Superman strong.”

  “I’m not Superman strong.”

  “Superman needs some fish.”

  Eva ducked out of the tent and came back a few minutes later with a plate of fish, bannock, and berries. Cole inhaled it. By the time Eva sat down, this time at his side, he was already finished. He wiped at his mouth with the bottom of his hoodie, which made Eva wince.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing, it’s just…imagine Superman wiping his mouth with his cape,” she said.

  “Enough with the Superman analogies please,” he said. “Plus you don’t know that. He puts his tights on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.”

  “Oh, but clichés are okay?”

  They laughed. Cole finished his plate, set it to the side. His smile faded, and was replaced with concern. “How is everybody?”

  Eva looked away from him, into the fire. Everything always came back to fire. She shook her head, while staring, unblinking, into the flames. “We lost one.”

  “Not…”

  “No, not Pam. A guy. Eric. People called him Sauce. He worked at the grocery store.”

  “I remember him.”

  “Worked until there was no reason to work there anymore, right until the rationing started.”

  Cole sighed. “Mihko’s keeping food from coming in, cutting off cell service, shutting down the ferry. This has to stop.”

  “I don’t want to take all the credit, but now that you’re on a full stomach you’re way more likely to stop them,” Eva said. “Just remember the little people when you’re a big-time hero.”

  “Nobody knows about what’s happening up here, remember?” Cole picked at some crumbs of bannock.

  “Oh yeah I forgot.”

  He tossed the crumbs, one by one, into the fire.

  “How’s Brady?”

  “Doing his best, as always. They all are. Elder Mariah, Dr. Captain. They don’t want to lose anybody else.”

  “How’s Michael? He didn’t look so good.”

  “Who does?”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “I mean, he lost his sister, and then he lost me…”

  “But you guys are still friends, right?”

  “We’re trying to be.” Eva ran her hands through her hair. “But it’s hard. When this is over, we’ll all be okay. Whatever okay looks like.”

  “I didn’t…” Cole maintained eye contact. “…come in here because you were here. I wasn’t trying to do anything. It’s just, that’s where I ended up. I was pretty much sleepwalking.”

  “Well, I might not have kicked you out, you know.”

  Eva played with the sweetgrass ring hanging around her neck. The air was thick suddenly, and Cole felt flushed.

  Eva cleared her throat.

  “So, what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I want to make sure everything here is under control before I head back. Make sure the guards don’t find the cabin.”

  “Do you think they’re still out there looking?”

  “I wanted to stay up and listen, but that didn’t quite happen.”

  “You were out cold.”

  “I think it’s a bit creepy that you were watching me sleep,” he teased.

  “Well,” she said, “you were watching me sleep first, so…”

  “Oh, I…”

  “Relax, Cole. It was cute.”

  “Cute,” he repeated, nodding his head. “Well, to answer your question, I don’t know. I’ll head back whenever it’s safe to leave.”

  “Safe for us, not for you.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “I know you will.” She reached over and squeezed his hand.

  “How do you know that?” He kept her hand there, holding it before she could take it back, if she was thinking about taking it back.

  “Because you have to be.”

  23

  SPOILER ALERT

  COLE FOUND BRADY, DR. CAPTAIN, and Elder Mariah in a huddle outside the cabin. Eva had gone to visit the patients and check on how everybody was doing. “Sometimes just letting somebody know they’re not alone helps, you know?” she’d said. Cole poked his head into the huddle. Whatever they had been discussing, they stopped.

  “How’s Lauren?” he asked.

  “Sleeping,” Dr. Captain said, “but she’ll be okay.”

  “Good. And everybody else?”

  “Some were farther along in the illness than others,” Dr. Captain said quietly.

  “We lost—” Brady started to say.

  “Eric,” Cole said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Not so far,” Dr. Captain said. “We might get lucky.”

  “It’s luck and the medicines nókom’s providing,” Brady said.

  “Mostly that,” Dr. Captain agreed. “All I can really do is give them fluids, keep their fever down, monitor them. I feel kind of…”

  “You’re not useless, Kate,” Elder Mariah said. “Traditional medicine is important, and western approaches can be too.”

  “Nókom’s answer is always balance,” Brady said.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “Uhhh…” Cole looked around Tent City.

  “Pam?” Brady said.
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  Cole nodded.

  “She’ll be okay,” Dr. Captain assured.

  “She was awake this morning,” Elder Mariah said.

  “Could I…” Cole started.

  “Come on,” Brady put his hand on Cole’s forearm, “I’ll take you to her tent.”

  “Thank you,” Cole said to the group, before following Brady between two tents to one that lay on the outskirts of the makeshift village they’d created. They stopped at the front flap. Cole went to raise his neck warmer over his mouth, the front skull’s perfect teeth and hollow nose about to replace his features. But Brady stopped him.

  “She doesn’t need The Reckoner,” Brady said. “She’ll want to see Cole.”

  Cole lowered his hands, stuck them into his hoodie pocket as though restraining them there. “You’re right.”

  “I usually am,” Brady said with an exaggerated sigh.

  “With you and Eva always right, how can anything ever be wrong?”

  “Shut up and get inside.” Brady patted Cole’s back reassuringly, then left to continue his work.

  Cole paused for a moment with his hand on the flap, ready and not ready to pull it to the side and walk in. Thinking about what Pam would say if she saw him do this exact thing—something like, “Come on, Harper, grow a pair and get inside,”—forced him into action.

  Pam was sharing space with two others, and all three occupants were sleeping. They had IV lines going into their forearms. The IV bags hung from the poles within the tent. Each patient had a little notepad at their feet. Dr. Captain’s charts, Cole figured.

  If he hadn’t known any better, he’d have thought Pam was just sleeping and not all that sick. Maybe suffering from a cold or flu or something, not some biological weapon. Whatever they were trying to accomplish at the clinic, Cole felt thankful that the virus they’d made didn’t seem to be as potent as the previous one. Not yet. But if Eric had been infected after Pam, it meant Mikho was getting closer. How long before they gave up searching and experimented on other community members? Cole shook off the thought and drew in a slow breath. He repeated the mantra he’d been trying to adopt. There is only now. There was only him, sitting on the dirt beside Pam, and Pam was alive.

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  She flinched.

  “Pam,” he said a bit louder.

  She squinted, and her eyes opened. She stared at the ceiling, not at Cole. Cole wasn’t sure if she was just disoriented from having woken up, or if she’d heard his voice and was deciding whether she was dreaming or not.

  “You’re okay,” he said.

  Now, she turned her head and met his gaze.

  “Cole?”

  Pam tried to sit up, but Cole eased her back down again and repositioned the pillow under her head.

  “Easy, tiger,” he said with a smile.

  “Joking does not make this more believable,” she said roughly. It must’ve hurt her throat to talk. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  Cole explained to her, what he’d explained to everybody else, and if she had any questions about his story, she didn’t ask. Maybe she was just too tired. Either way, Cole was relieved.

  “But speaking of dead,” Cole said, “you came pretty damn close yourself.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Pam said. “But here I am, still awesome.”

  Cole laughed. “Yeah, you are.”

  He looked at her carefully. Her hands folded over the top of her blanket, her chest rising and falling as though she’d just finished a race. She would be okay, but wasn’t there yet. Dry lips, clammy skin, a bit of sweat on her brow that shimmered in the low light of the fire, and her black hair speckled with the odd strand of grey.

  “How’d it happen?” he asked.

  “How’d I get so awesome?”

  Cole stifled another laugh, not wanting to wake up the other people in the tent. “No,” he said, “how did you get taken? How did they—”

  She turned away, to the side of the tent.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me that…”

  “I was coming home from school,” she said. He could tell that each syllable required a monumental effort. “I was there late. Fixing up a connection thing. When I left, it was past curfew.”

  “They stopped you because of that.”

  “Said they were taking me to the detachment. Get a slap on the wrist, something. Then they just…took me.”

  “To the clinic.”

  “I was there a few days, and then everything blends together. Like it wasn’t real. I wish it wasn’t real.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have been so—”

  “You know what’s clear in my mind?”

  “What?”

  “Me telling you to stop apologizing for things.”

  She repositioned her head against the pillow, so she faced the tiny opening at the top of the tent. She stared out of that hole at the sky. It was a perfect blue.

  “You should rest,” Cole said.

  She nodded.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what, so he patted her shoulder, got up, and went to the flap. “If there’s anything I can do…”

  “Do you know what I really need you to do right now?” Her face was uncharacteristically devoid of any sarcasm, humour. Her eyes were digging into him, telling him about all the fear she’d gone through, and the pain in the illness, without uttering a single word.

  “What’s that?”

  “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

  They buried Eric and Tristan in the field by the edge of the forest. Cole had to dig the graves. Nobody else was strong enough to break ground, the soil stubbornly firm in the autumn. Once he’d filled earth in over their bodies, Cole placed a large rock at the head of each grave. There was a small gathering. Lauren, Eva, Brady, Cole, Elder Mariah, Dr. Captain, Brady’s parents.

  “Where’s Mike?” Cole asked Eva.

  Eva just shrugged. Dr. Captain looked annoyed at her son’s absence.

  Brady laid tobacco over the graves and said a prayer in Cree for Tristan and Eric. Cole kept going over the confusing relationship he’d had with Tristan while Brady said his prayer. Tristan, trying to beat the shit out of him. Tristan, saving people with him from the clinic. Tristan, taking a bullet that was probably meant for Cole. Tristan had just wanted to do what he felt was right. When he thought Cole was responsible, he was ready to do something about it. When he knew Cole wasn’t involved, he was ready to work with him so that, as a team, they could take action. Cole followed those thoughts with his own prayer. Words in his mind only for Tristan. I won’t let you down. He said, “Ekosani,” at the same time as everybody else.

  Elder Mariah had brought a drum to the ceremony. When the tobacco had been laid, when the prayers had been said, she sang the honour song, then the travelling song. Cole closed his eyes for both and tried to feel each beat of the drum vibrate through his body, into his chest. He tried to recall the feeling he’d had when he was in the place that Tristan and Eric were in now. He tried to imagine them as ribbons of light, dancing to the songs the Elder was singing. Cole remembered dancing to the beat of the drum. Maybe the songs they danced to there were songs being played here. Carrying through the wind, over Mother Earth.

  They talked about moving Eric and Tristan to the cemetery in Wounded Sky after the winter, after this ordeal was over, if it ended in a good way.

  “I think they should stay here,” Brady said.

  “Why?” Eva asked.

  “It’s where I want to be buried,” he said. “It’s where we all belong.”

  Eva looked around, turning her body three hundred and sixty degrees, and took in everything. She nodded. “Okay. Yeah.”

  “They can stay here,” Elder Mariah said. “I’ll care for them.”

  “I just hope we don’t have to bury anybody else,” Lauren said.

  Dr. Captain looked out over Tent City. “They’re doing well. They should pull through.�
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  “And when they take more?” Lauren asked. “We can’t just keep rescuing people, over and over.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” Cole said.

  “Have you thought about how you’re going to shut that place down?” Eva asked.

  “Blow it up?” Cole said.

  “With what?” Brady asked.

  “We don’t just have explosives lying around,” Lauren said.

  “Well, that’s the only way to make sure they leave,” Cole said. “Make sure they’ve got nothing to come back to.”

  “Burn it,” Brady said.

  “I don’t…” Cole couldn’t formulate a response. Brady was right, but it’s not something Cole wanted to think about, and by the reaction of the others, it wasn’t something they wanted to think about either. For a moment, he was a boy again, standing in front of the elementary school as it went up in flames, burning so hot and bright the sky was on fire.

  Fire. The word kept echoing in Cole’s mind. Night had fallen. He’d kept to himself most of the day, and after eating, left Tent City and found his way back to a small clearing in Blackwood Forest. Death to life. He watched the tiny ripples of water in the brook, but saw only flames. The kind of rolling flames he used to see when he was out camping with his mom and dad. He’d sit by the fire and look into the heart of it, where the flames looked like bright orange water. Fluid. Like it was dancing. Like ribbons. Cole stared wide-eyed at the water. He could hear the drums again, beating in the distance. A mist hung over the water like smoke. Cole shook his head.

  “I can’t do it,” he whispered to nobody but himself. “I don’t think I can do it.”

  “But there was all that tough talk at the beginning.”

  Cole turned around to see Choch strolling out of the forest, dressed in a bathrobe, his body surrounded by a blue haze. Translucent. He sat down beside Cole and joined him in staring at the water.

  “Choch?” Cole couldn’t believe his eyes. He moved his hand through Choch’s body. “You’re a—”

  “Appropriate, given the title of this story, no?”

  “—ghost.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Why are you back?” Cole asked.