“I lost mine,” she confided. “I don’t even know where or how, suddenly I just realized I didn’t have it anymore. That was hard. But I think God understands these things happen. When we’re blinded or crippled is when He best helps guide us. I mean, look what He’s done right now, leading us both to each—”
“Did you want me to fry those up?” Lisa asked. I could see her wishing for a proper crucifix of her own, or a Virgin Mary statue to hit Tina over the head with. “I mean, if you’re too busy with the homily.”
Russell didn’t smile, exactly, but his eyes, his face suffused with a sudden warmth, like the lines cut deep in the skin were rays; he’d been a handsome man, you could tell, a good long time ago. “Don’t let her talk put you off,” he said, giving Tina this easy look like her talk was part of the air, the water, he could tease about it because he’d never lose it. “It’s like she said, been a year and a day, for real almost, since she found anyone who—”
“I’m Catholic,” Lisa replied, stroking Naomi’s hair as she talked. “So it all means nothing to me anyway.”
“I don’t expect it to,” Tina said, picking up her frying pan. “We don’t proselytize. I thought it might mean something to your little girl, though, that’s all.”
“Some food,” Stephen said, “might mean a lot to the rest of us.”
Renee’s lips twitched, over where she and Jessie and Linc sat still steadily shoving morsels of meat in their mouths, licking fat from their fingers; she got up, the tarnished rings covering her hands gleaming with spit and grease, and wandered over to the carcass. “You’re welcome,” she said.
Nick got up from his place at the fire, settling himself right next to Stephen without bothering to turn round and round for a comfortable seat. He gazed up at Stephen, as heated and fixed a stare as he’d given the flames, then put his ears back and let out a low, rumbling growl.
“Stop that,” Stephen muttered, half-hearted, as Renee’s hands pinkened and reddened and the meat cooked for him, for my mother and Lisa and Naomi. “Just stop.”
Stephen looked dreadful this morning, eyes bloodshot and puffy like he’d been drinking and shadows underneath them that made skull-like hollows of his face; he’d picked the stitches out of his throat sometime during the night, nothing left of our lab misadventures but the faint puckered suture-holes already healing over, and my own neck itched and twitched needing to do the same, afraid if I tried it I’d end up gaping open and gushing blood.
After his outburst yesterday, he’d just sat there on the beach with his knees drawn up nearly to his chin, rocking vaguely back and forth and staring at the sand in something close to misery. Nightmares? Night visions, something that—why couldn’t we be alone, so we could talk about it? One night alone together, a few minutes here and there in the lab or Paradise City, that was the whole of whatever we’d had.
Stephen mumbled vague thanks to Renee when she handed him a plate, and he and my mother lowered their heads and attacked their meat, my leftover meat, the one oozing fried egg divided between her plate and his. Naomi, thanks to Lisa and Tina’s silent, ecumenical flickers of agreement, got a whole egg for herself. As she ate, she pointedly ignored Stephen, angling her small self as far away from him as she could without actually turning her back. I made myself concentrate on the egg I was sharing with Lisa, deep rich-tasting orange yolk like they always said chickens gave if you let them scratch for grubs and run around (but nobody let animals just run around, back before, having an open farm was a flesh-invitation to the undead so they penned them up in factory farms, guarded with machine guns for their own protection), the faint gamey flavor from the cooking grease, because I knew Nick wasn’t just barking at nothing. He’d seen something. We all knew Nick saw something. Stephen was scared and that made me scared and I didn’t know what to do but keep pretending everything was good and friendly until I’d finished my meal. Just like every meal, back at my uncle’s, when my mother was still missing.
“We saw you folks coming down the main road yesterday,” Russell said, into the silence. “Thought we’d let you rest a night before we came over to visit. We’re camped out in some of the old houses just down the way, what used to be Wakefield Dunes, plenty of supplies to share and beds and company if you—”
“Nick!” my mother shouted. “No! Stop it!”
Nick was growling louder now, then barking sharp and fast at Stephen as he sat huddled over his breakfast, and before I could stop him Nick leapt at Stephen’s knee and knocked the plate right out of his hands. Dish and venison and fried egg went flying, thudding wrong-side down on the leaves at my feet, and instead of rushing to eat it, Nick darted around the trees, hurtled back toward us, thudded to a confused, noisy stop at Stephen’s side once again. Naomi gasped, fork frozen halfway to her mouth, and Stephen sprang to his feet, a streak of dried yolk like paint smeared across his flushed cheek.
“Nick!” Naomi cried. Genuinely scandalized, she sounded. “Bad dog! Why did you do that?”
“Here,” Lisa said with a swift glance at me, holding out her plate. “Take the rest of mine, I don’t want it.”
“I’m not hungry,” Stephen said softly. He held the syllables thoughtfully in his mouth, like a fruit he wasn’t quite sure was ripe enough to bite; his hand ran fretfully through his hair, his eyes darted from me to Lisa still holding out her plate to the underbrush where Nick crouched, barking and barking. “Amy? You got him to quiet down last night. Make him stop.”
I couldn’t, today. I just knew I couldn’t, even though I didn’t know why, any more than I could stop him following me back at Lepingville; there was something in the air all around us, a heavy restless miasma in the morning sky that I couldn’t see but could almost taste, a gamey flavor like the venison weighting down my stomach but stronger, more sour, the first cousin of rot. I’d thought it was just the air in the cabins, but it was everywhere, its pounding staleness filling all our lungs; Nick’s incessant barking, here and last night, it was like he was desperately trying to cough it all up.
I called Nick’s name, almost crooning it, and he didn’t quiet down. I knelt down in the ruined leaves, stretching out an arm to stroke him, and then without any warning a mass of fur and teeth and high howling canine panic was flying straight at me, a wild blindness in his eyes as he sent me sideways and sprawling on my back in the underbrush. His jaws were wide open inches from my face, drooling with heat and ready to snap, my mother came running toward us with a scream—but he didn’t bite me, he didn’t even try, just barreled over me where I lay and disappeared at double speed, running feverishly through the trees and out of sight.
It’s all right, boy. It’s all right, it wasn’t me you were after, I was only the thing standing in your way—and they all knew it too, I could tell by their faces, as they ringed round me where I lay with mud caked down my shirt front and egg yolk drying in my hair. All except Stephen, almost shaking with anger as he helped brush me off and set me back on my feet.
“I’ll go after him,” I said. There was blood all over my jeans, I’d knocked my leg against a sharp rock, but I barely felt that or the bark-scrapes on my palms. “He’s never been like this, not before, we need to figure out what he’s seeing that’s making him so—”
“He’s not seeing anything!” Stephen shouted, an ugly spitting rasp in his voice, pacing feet twitching to kick anything in their path. “Other than easy targets, that’s what he’s seeing—first Naomi, now you, he’s your own damned demon familiar and he goes and turns on you, too!”
“He didn’t! He hasn’t turned on anyone, you’re just—”
“What, I’m seeing things? Like yesterday, on the beach? Like I just hallucinated him going straight for your face?” He swept an arm through the air, at the greenery around us, the sky. “The trees, the animals we saw coming here, the... whatever it is right now, that feeling in the air, it’s following us wherever he goes—he’s part of it! If he’s not causing it, he knows damned well what is!”
“He wasn’t going for my face! He was just trying to get away, everybody saw it! He’s shit-scared, just like the rest of us!”
“Stephen,” my mother said, and she’d never liked Nick, never wanted him, but she knew I was right this time, knew that whatever has seized hold of the air, the woods, the world had Nick as unmoored as we were. “Think about what you’re saying. I know things have felt... not right, for a long time now—”
“Not right at all,” Tina said, quietly. “Not where we are, either.”
“Exactly! It’s been everywhere!” My mother flung her hand in Tina’s direction, see there don’t you see, and Naomi’s eyes were growing huge with fright and Jessie, Linc, the others were approaching closer, cautious, ready to try and break up an actual fight. “Stephen, think. You don’t seriously believe Nick could be in eighty different places at—”
“Why not?” Stephen shouted. “Why couldn’t he? Everything that’s happened? The way Amy met him in the first place?” His eyes were on me now, the accused, the softhearted fool who’d dragged the blight into our midst and wouldn’t see it for what it was. “Everything you keep saying you’ve seen, Amy, why couldn’t—”
“Saying I’ve seen.” I shook my head. “You still don’t believe it, do you? I tell people over and over what happened and how he saved all our hides, including yours, but you never listen to a damned word I say!” I was shouting now too, hoarse and hurting and ready to hurl Tina’s frying pan right at his head. “None of you do! Nobody! I thought you were different, that you understood what—you saw it happen, you saw him get us out of there, and you still don’t listen!”
“Because you’re not listening to me!” Yelling back, yelling like we were all alone and nobody else watching us mattered, the scars on his neck dark red and throbbing. “Because it happens right in front of everyone, plain as the fucking sunshine, and you don’t want to see it! You don’t want to listen to a goddamned thing except what you want to hear!”
My mother put a hand on his shoulder. “Stephen—”
He yanked himself free and stalked off toward the beach, not slowing down even when he stumbled and nearly fell over a thick protruding tree root, never looking back. Nick’s infuriated echoes still reverberated from the woods; as we stood there listening they grew farther and farther away, still frantic, ever fainter, and then nothing.
Everything was quiet, for a moment, then Jessie shook her head and picked up a bucket sitting pitside. “Congratulations, ma’am,” she said, without too much malice, as she doused the fire. “You certainly know how to pick ‘em.”
“So did you,” Renee said, quite calmly, as she started stacking plates. “Once.”
Jessie glanced at Renee like she wanted to yell, but there was sadness in her eyes, sadness and a peculiar embarrassment I knew didn’t come from any of us hearing this. “Exactly,” she said.
Linc reached out and rubbed her arm, casual little intimacy that made a pang go through me: Stephen, goddammit, you fucking fool. Didn’t he realize that even though he was wrong about this, about Nick, that I still understood, that we both together felt how strange and wrong everything had become? Just like Nick, just now? Lisa and my mother both glanced at me, apologetic like this was somehow their fault.
“Don’t ask me,” I said, wiping my fingers on one of the bandannas Linc had been passing around for napkins. There was a quaver in my voice and that just made me feel angrier. “I mean, seriously, nobody ever ask me another—”
“Nick will get lost,” Naomi said, tearful. “We have to go look for him.”
“He’ll be fine,” Lisa soothed, wadding up another bandanna and dipping it in the bucket to scrub Naomi’s face clean. “He’ll come back, just let him run around alone for a while. Away from people.” She glanced over at me, apprehensive, confused: she knew Nick hadn’t tried to attack me, would never countenance his coming back if she thought he’d attack any of us, but he’d had still spooked her. Like he had since first she’d seen him. “It might be better that way.”
“He got scared, that’s why he ran away!” Naomi was now crying in earnest. “Just like Amy said! He’s scared and all by himself and we have to find him!”
Nothing was going to dissuade her so Lisa sighed, took her hand and they went off together into the trees, following what they could of Nick’s path. Russell, who’d been quietly sitting there taking all this in, gave me a sympathetic attempt at a smile.
“We’re all spooked, too,” he confirmed. “Can’t put my finger on it. Last few days, especially, I keep waking up at night and even though I can feel the air going in and out of me, it’s still like I ain’t breathing anymore—”
“We don’t know what to think,” Tina said. Her stubborn good cheer wavered, faltered just a little bit, as she wiped out the frying pan and repacked her basket. “I just worry that maybe it’s some new sickness, or—I’m trying to put my trust in the Lord, I really am. Though sometimes that’s hard. But I don’t know what to think.”
Everybody was staring at me and I wished they’d stop. I edged closer to my mother’s side. “Don’t get mad at Lisa,” I told Tina, though why I even cared about that I couldn’t have said. Just sick of yelling, sick of sniping, never mind who or what set it off. “It’s not the Catholic thing, she just gets jealous about Naomi—don’t get pissed at her about it.” I shrugged. “I mean, Naomi is all she’ll have left.”
It took me a moment to realize what I’d just said and they were all staring at me harder, Jessie, my mother, all their faces ranging from puzzlement to open alarm. All she’s got left, I opened my mouth to say, that’s what I meant, but the words seemed to stick and falter in my throat like a dry little wad of paper scrawled with lies and I couldn’t say them, something inside me actually refused to say them. Because what I’d said the first time was right, and I knew it was right. Naomi was all Lisa would have left.
I didn’t know why I said it. But I knew it was true. Feeling all through me like when Nick was first following me, that feeling of being truly seen for what I was for the first time in my nothing invisible life (though they were watching me all along, all that time I thought my mother and I had no friends, it turned out we had acquaintances and observers around us, everywhere). Everything in me, laid bare under the light.
“Amy,” my mother said. The fear in her that I’d elicited without trying gave me an unwelcome surge of guilt. “What do you—”
“So where’d that come from?” Jessie cut in. “What you just said?”
Jessie, Lisa’s sister, who saw things other people didn’t, Lisa said. She was looking at me with sharp, matter-of-fact eyes, no surprise in her, and her ex friends were too.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I really don’t.” I glanced at my mother. In for a penny. “It’s like—something told me to say it, before I realized I hadn’t thought of it myself, because it’s true.” I swallowed. That spotlit feeling, again, that feeling of being X-rayed in public and everyone seeing the plastered-over hollows where my bones should’ve been. And another feeling too, compulsion. “It’s something that’s going to happen, no matter what we do.”
Birds called out overhead, the insistent exuberant cheeping of hungry chicks. I hoped their mother hadn’t dropped to the ground, somewhere, falling in mid-flight for no reason whatsoever. Jessie nodded at me, then turned to Russell and Tina.
“Go back to Cowleston,” she said. Sharp and commanding, but not angry. “Might be better that way.”
“Might be needed there either way.” Russell took up Tina’s basket, glanced at her with a stubborn flash of habitual amusement. “If Reverend Kim here’s gonna insist I’m the mayor—”
“We all picked you, didn’t we?” Tina slid her arms into the jacket she’d spread on the ground as a seat-cushion. “I’m sorry we had to meet like this, but you’re all welcome to come to us if you want to. We’ve got a sign out by the roadside. There’s only about thirty of us and plenty of foraged supplies. Down around what used to be the Convent of
St. Ignatius, you can’t miss it.” She glanced at Jessie. “Stay safe, all of you. Let us know what’s going on when you can. And God bless.”
They headed through the trees and toward the road without looking back. Jessie waited until they were out of sight or earshot, then turned to me.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said. Her eyes flared up, the last remnant of something predatory and merciless that’d once been all inside her, eating her alive, but now was just an ember, an echo. No less frightening for it. “If you do, you’d better spill it right now.”
“Or what?” My mother’s words were quiet but her face was grim. “Or what then? Are you threatening—”
“She doesn’t need to threaten,” Linc said. That rumbling, almost guttural voice, a man’s voice with all the wear and tear of age, though he looked no older than me. “We’re all threatened—we might not know how, or why, but we are. That’s the point.” He turned to Jessie like of course she would know, like she’d known too much before this to let them down now. “So what do we do?”
I expected her to snap back at him but her shoulders sagged, she seemed to huddle into herself, and she was so small, so thin, a child swimming in a sea of grownup’s clothes. She gazed at the ground, squeezed hard on a stone she’d pulled from her pocket, then looked up with a sort of weary, old-woman resignation.
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” she said. “But the kiddie, the one Lisa dragged in? I have a feeling she was right. We have to go find that dog.”
NINE
STEPHEN
They were all just seeing what they wanted to see, hearing what they wanted to hear, and I was the rotten branch on the tree for trying to warn them. To keep us halfway safe. Didn’t I try and look out for Naomi, back in Paradise City, when Billy and Mags would make her cry every day just for fun? And for poor crazy Janey, who even before she got to Paradise went through things nobody wanted to think about, who even when her “husband” Don scolded her still kept forgetting to eat? I know it didn’t do us much good, all my looking-out. It didn’t do Amy any good at all—dragged off to the lab, her throat cut, made one of us and I’d have let them do anything to me, I didn’t care what more they did to me, if only they’d stayed away from her.
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