Hole in the Sky

by Pete Hautman

  “All right,” Emory said. “Since they did not catch up with us on the rim road, they will think we are headed for Tusayan.” He backed the Jeep out to the road and pointed it east, shifted into first gear, and we were on our way.

  I spent most of the drive to Desert View trying to bring Harryette up to speed. I turned on the dome light so we could talk with our hands.

  And then what? she asked. If Ceej shows up, then what?

  There is still the dam, I signed. We have to get to Page.

  Emory must have understood some of our silent conversation, because he said, “It is of little use, young one. The dam will fail. Mother K has foretold this.”

  “Mother K is the cause of it,” I said.

  Emory shook his head slowly. “You do not understand. But your time will come. Perhaps you will be judged fit to join us.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Emory’s lips stretched across his big front teeth and he began to make a huffing sound. For a moment I thought he was choking, then I realized it was laughter. I had never heard Emory laugh before.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He shook his head. “You make me believe you.”

  “You should come with us.”

  “No, I do not think so.”

  “Then why are you helping us?”

  Emory drove in silence for several seconds, then said, “Your father was a good man. He would have wanted me to help you.”

  “You can’t go back. They’ll know you helped us get away.”

  “They will not harm me. They are my people.”

  “They sure harmed Hap.”

  Emory’s face contorted; his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You do not under stand. Your father was given to the Judgment of the Divine. There was no intent to harm him.”

  “Yeah, well, it did.”

  Emory looked at me for so long I was afraid he’d drive off the road. Finally he looked away and did not say another word until we reached Desert View.

  Standing beneath the dark bulk of the Watchtower, we watched the Jeep’s taillights disappear. Emory said he would keep driving the thirty miles to Cameron, then circle back through Tusayan and return to Grand Canyon Village. He said he’d tell the rest of the Kinka that we had forced him to drive us to Flagstaff. We were safe, for the time being. The air temperature suddenly seemed to drop, and I could hear the wind rushing up the walls of the canyon. A cold front moving in? I looked at Harryette. She stood with her eyes closed, hugging herself, looking as small and frail as I felt.

  What now? she signed.

  I looked up at the ragged stone walls.

  We wait for Ceej.

  THE WATCHTOWER

  THE WATCHTOWER AT DESERT VIEW is a cylindrical stone building sticking up seventy feet above the canyon rim. It was built a hundred years ago as a scenic view for tourists. Ceej had suggested the tower as our backup rendezvous. He and his uncle had hidden caches of food, water, and survival gear at several places in and around Grand Canyon. “Just in case,” Ceej’s uncle had said. “Because you never know what might happen someday.”

  This was someday, and the Watchtower concealed one of those caches.

  Harryette and I found the metal footlocker hidden beneath a pile of broken furniture on the first floor of the Watchtower. I pried it open. The first thing I felt was a flashlight. I pressed the switch and a weak yellow glow illuminated the cache: several glass jugs of water, boxes and bags of food, a shotgun, a medical kit, and some blankets. I was mostly interested in the food—the excitement of the past few hours had made me ravenous. I pointed the flashlight at my face and moved my left hand from my mouth toward my stomach.

  Hungry?

  Harryette nodded. I got out one of the water jugs and a box of Raisin Bran. I turned off the flashlight to save what little was left of the batteries. We sat down on the stone floor and ate handfuls of cereal and washed it down with water. No one had made Raisin Bran since before the Flu, so this box had to be more than ten years old. The raisins were hard as old pine resin, but sweet as candy. We ate like starving animals, shoving food into our mouths like we’d never eat again.

  We felt our way up the winding staircase, blankets draped over our shoulders, hands sliding up the rawhide-wrapped banister, invisible spider webs dragging across our faces. The flashlight died halfway up the first flight. We climbed into blackness until the stairs ended. We were on the top floor. I looked out one of the small windows. On a clear day you could see a hundred miles, but on that dark night we saw only a faint brightness in the east where the moon would soon rise. The south wall of the tower was still warm from sucking up sunlight all day. We spread the blankets on the floor along the wall and sat down to wait. Assuming that Ceej and Bella were okay, it would take a few hours for them to walk all the way from the village to Desert View. We probably wouldn’t see them until morning.

  If they didn’t show up then, I didn’t know what we’d do. I didn’t want to think about it. There were a lot of things I didn’t want to think about. I’ve always been good at not thinking about things. I’m more of a doer. For instance, I had hardly thought about Hap at all. I’d put him away someplace inside my head. That’s what you have to do sometimes when people die and you aren’t ready for it. I was sitting with my back to the warm wall staring into blackness not thinking about Hap and Ceej and the Kinka when I felt Harryette’s hand touch my shoulder, then move down my arm to my hand.

  She was sitting in front of me, I could see her shape but nothing else. Her fingers wrapped my hand, lifted it to a place halfway between us. She felt for my other hand, found it, and brought it up to join the first. She held my hands there, a few inches apart, then let go and placed both of her hands between mine so that my hands were lightly touching hers. At first I didn’t know what she was doing, then her hands started to move and I understood that she was talking to me.

  I followed her hands with my fingers, trying to imagine the shapes they formed.

  She was saying, Thank you.

  For what?

  For taking me away from—She tapped her forehead with the K sign. I understood her to mean the Kinka.

  A huge weight lifted off me, and I knew for the first time how afraid I had been that she would hate me for taking her away.

  I signed back, I was afraid you wouldn’t come.

  I did not want you to be in danger.

  I don’t care about that.

  You are very brave.

  I just wanted you to come with us.

  She didn’t reply, but I knew what she was thinking: Come with you where?

  To change the subject I asked, The Kinka, are they all insane?

  They are not insane. They are people. They are kind to their children. I might have stayed with them.

  That Mother K, she’s got to be crazy. She was listening to voices in her head!

  That is her burden. All the Kinka have been hurt by the Flu. It is what brings them together.

  She had strange eyes.

  Yes. She is strange. We are all strange. Strange is different from insane.

  Our hands filled the blackness between us. She would sign, and my hands would follow hers, and then I would sign, feeling her fingers lightly touching mine. At times it seemed we were both signing at once, sending and receiving with the speed of thought. I was hand-talking, but another part of me swam in the world of touch, surrounded by Harryette.

  My hands formed the thought: You are not strange to me.

  A faint rectangle of light appeared on the wall. Moon-rise. I could see the curve of Harryette’s cheek, closer than I’d thought. She was smiling. Her nose was only inches from mine. The light got brighter as the moon mounted the horizon. Harryette brought her hands up to my face. I could feel each of her fingers, separate and distinct, hot on my cheeks, then sliding around to the back of my head, pulling me toward her.

  The Flu itself must be considered the greatest disaster ever visited upon the human race, both because of the shee
r number of virus-induced fatalities, and because of the hundreds of lesser disasters that followed in its wake, including three nuclear power plant meltdowns, the great fires in Manhattan and Detroit, the widespread looting and rioting in every major city, and the collapse of the Internet. Most estimates place the number of non-Flu fatalities from 2029—34 at more than three hundred million, far more than might be considered “normal!”

  —from A Recent History of the Human Race by P. D. Boggs © 2038

  PART FOUR: HARRYETTE

  SORROW

  MY MOTHER’S COOL HAND on my fevered forehead, tears shining on her cheeks, blue eyes fierce. I cough, spraying her with virus, both of us knowing that it was the end. And it was, for her and for Dad, but for some reason I survived and became a hairless mute.

  Had I offered my parents the Judgment of the Divine, or had I simply killed them?

  Something touched my arm. I opened my eyes. A circular room of stone; the Watchtower. Gray light oozed in through clouded windows, eight of them, one at each point of the compass. Morning light. Cool air prickled my scalp. I turned my head and saw Tim’s face.

  He smiled, greeting me with his eyes.

  I nodded, seeing echoes, of his father, Hap, in Tim’s elfin features. The late Hap Gordon. You could sometimes tell, according to Mother K, which ones would live and which would die. Those destined to survive the Judgment always slipped into a coma a day or two after symptoms first appeared. The ones who remained conscious, fighting the virus until they were too weak to breathe, were certain to die. Both Hap and Uncle had been fighters. Grief plucked at my ribs, twisted my insides.

  Tim’s hand gripped mine, pulling me up into a sitting position. I was wrapped in wool. I thought of Mother K trapped in her cocoon and quickly threw off the blanket.

  Tim pointed to his mouth. Hungry? Most of Tim’s signs were ones he’d invented, but we communicated well enough. I nodded.

  Tim made us breakfast of decade-old crackers with dried apples and pine nut butter. I wished we had something hot to drink, but I knew we couldn’t make a fire. The Kinka probably would not look for us here—Emory would tell them we had gone off in the other direction—but the slightest curl of smoke could give us away. We had to be careful. We washed the stale crackers down with stale water. Tim ate like an animal, shoving the food into his mouth faster than he could chew. When he finished, he went and stood looking out the southwest window, waiting for Ceej.

  He looked at me and moved his hands. Ceej here soon.

  Tim’s signing was clumsy and abrupt, but I knew what he meant. I nodded, smiling to show that I understood. He turned back to the window. I chewed another cracker and watched him watching. He stood very straight, his shoulders square, his feet planted firmly. Tim was always ready to move—to duck or run or charge forward. His body did what he wanted. In another time, another place, he would have been a gymnast or a soccer player. He would have been a professional athlete and I would have been a famous actress with long blond hair and a beautiful voice.

  I joined him at the window looking down at the twisted ribbon of crumbling asphalt that was East Rim Drive. I put my hands on his shoulders, felt his muscles tense, then relax. I wrapped my arms around his chest and hugged, thinking that this was not so bad. We had food, we had water, we had each other. A few hours ago I had planned to spend the rest of my life with the Kinka. Now my life would go a different way.

  Sometimes life takes big, sudden turns. Mine has taken several. The biggest one was when I caught the Flu, eight years ago.

  I remember the pain, the coughing, and knowing I would die. I was both frightened and sad. I remember the coma taking me, sucking me deep into its black embrace. I must have been gone a long time. Later, Ceej told me that it had been a week, but he was only eight years old and probably exaggerating. I woke up in a strange bed, hungry and thirsty and confused. I looked into the mirror hanging on the wall and saw a pale, thin, hairless creature. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a sound like fingernails clawing a blackboard. I tottered on weak legs to the doorway and looked out into an unfamiliar hallway.

  There was a very bad smell in the house.

  I found my mother curled up on a paisley print sofa. I did not need to touch her to know she was dead. I ran out of the house. Our Land Cruiser sat parked in the driveway. My father was behind the wheel. I ran up to him and put my hand on the door handle and pulled, but the door was locked. I put my face to the glass and saw his protruding tongue and his dry eyes. He had joined my mother.

  I was sure that I would find Ceej next. I went into the house next door and found a bottle of ginger ale and a box of Oreos. I took them outside and sat on the front steps and started to eat slowly, one tiny bite at a time. I was halfway through the box of cookies when Ceej came strolling down the street. I thought I was dreaming.

  He saw me a second after I saw him. He walked up to me. His mouth opened and sounds came out. They sounded like words, but in some strange foreign language. I tried to ask, “What did you say?” but when I pushed the words from my brain toward my mouth, nothing happened.

  I had forgotten how to talk.

  Since then I’ve read a lot about the way the brain works, but nothing I’ve read comes close to explaining what happened to me while I was in that coma. The one thing IVe learned is the more you know about the human brain, the more strange and mysterious it gets. I’ve read about a man who was perfectly normal except that he couldn’t recognize his own face. I’ve read about people who can see sounds and smell colors. I’ve read about a woman who ate her own children, and about a man who ate an entire Volkswagen. What happened to me was no stranger than that. At least I knew who I was. At least I wasn’t eating a car.

  But it was terrible. I felt cut off from Ceej, as if a wall of glass brick surrounded me. For months, or maybe years, I was sure that one day I would wake up and words would pour from my mouth. It hasn’t happened. Fortunately, I could still read and write. And I could learn to sign. I was better off than many Survivors who lost their eyesight or hearing, or both, or who had gone completely insane. But the wall was still there.

  During the days I had spent with the Kinka, I learned that I was not alone. Every Survivor is damaged. Some, like Emory, seem normal at first—but the Flu changes all who are exposed. Emory had been an artist before he got sick. He had painted fantastic scenes of starships and other planets, but after the Flu, he discovered that he had lost his ability to dream, and to create. When he touched pencil to paper he saw nothing, he imagined nothing. Emory was the saddest of men.

  Mother K, who could see and hear and speak with perfect clarity, had lost her ability to be alone. While I could not understand a single spoken word, Mother K was constantly bombarded by voices inside her head, demanding her attention. Some of the voices she could ignore; others were more insistent.

  All of us had been damaged. All of us were alone. But as Kinka, we had been alone together. Together we were a whole. Such was Mother K’s message, and the Kinka’s lure.

  But now I was with Tim, and I would stay with him. Of all the people I knew, Tim came the closest to penetrating the glass wall. He was a terrible signer, but his hands moved with such urgency and eagerness that I always knew what he was trying to say. The bond between us was stronger than anything the Kinka had to offer.

  Ceej showed up a couple of hours later, trudging down the rim road. He was not alone. At first, I thought the person walking beside him was Kinka. Then I recognized the girl, the false Kinka.

  The one who had been judged.

  Tim shouted from the window. Ceej looked up and waved wearily. He and the girl walked to a low stone wall and sat down. Tim started for the stairs, but I grabbed him and made him look at me.

  She is not safe, I signed. She is sick with Flu!

  His shoulders sagged, and I saw that he believed me. Like Hap.

  You know about Hap?

  Tim nodded. We talked.

  You talked to him? I was afraid to ask t
he next question, but I had to. How close did you get to him?

  Not close. He told me to go away. He was sick.

  Then you know that the girl is infected.

  Tim nodded, his face contorted. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know, but I had to say it.

  Now Ceej is infected, too.

  THE CQUGH

  CEEJ, BELLA, AND I SAT ON the low wall surrounding the stone patio at the base of the tower. Tim stayed fifty feet away and upwind. Until we knew for sure whether Bella had caught the disease, he would have to keep his distance.

  As for Ceej, I had little hope. If it was too late for Bella, it was too late for him.

  Talking and signing, Ceej told us what happened after they freed Bella.

  Bella had come rushing out, knocking Ceej down and running off into the woods. She had been so scared she hadn’t even realized it was him. Ceej took off after her but, with his sore foot, he wasn’t fast enough. He had stumbled around in the dark forest, calling her name as loud as he dared.

  Bella, meanwhile, had circled back to the Ranger Office. When Ceej finally thought to go back there himself, he found Bella sitting in the darkness on the front steps wearing her backpack. That was about the same time things busted loose at El Tovar. Ceej and Bella heard engines, then shouting, then saw lights flashing. They didn’t know if her escape had been discovered, or if Tim had been caught, or if something else had happened, but they knew it was time to leave. They’d started walking toward Desert View. They’d walked all night. I could see the fatigue in their eyes and in the way they sat on the low stone wall, leaning against each other for support.

  Why did you let him near you? I asked Bella. I was too angry to care if she understood me. You knew you’d been exposed!

  She stared at my moving hands, uncomprehending.

  Ceej answered, giving me his defiant, stubborn, little-brother stare. It doesn’t make any difference.