by Ashley Ream
“This is for one month’s supply,” he said. “I can get you more as we go.” He was wearing a gray T-shirt and a pair of khaki pants that had become too big for him and drooped around his hips. It was cold in the house. It was always cold in the house just like it was always cold outside. And still, there were rings of sweat under Harry’s arms.
The money made her feel like a low-level drug dealer, which wasn’t to say that she didn’t want it. She was a post-doc after all, which meant she lived largely on six-for-three-dollar packages of ramen, and her equipment was not free. Still, she had to stay focused.
“I don’t—” she started, but Harry held up his hand to silence her.
It would have been rude except that he looked back over his shoulder again, longer this time. “Do you hear something?” Harry spoke without turning back to her. “We’re not alone right now.”
Rachel knew they weren’t alone. She was never alone in the house. It was bustling with people.
“I’m also making notes for you,” Harry said, giving her more if not all of his attention. “I made some—I made some yesterday, but I laid them down, and now I can’t—I can’t find them. There are some side effects.”
Harry held the roll out to her. It was everything she had not to take it.
“I don’t have time to prepare another dose right now. I have to leave. I’m packing.”
“Leave? Leave where?”
“I have what I need here,” Rachel said. “I can continue my work back in Seattle.”
Harry was becoming more and more agitated. “No, you don’t understand,” he said.
She went on like he hadn’t spoken. “I have just a few more things to take care of. I’ll work through the night and be gone in the morning.” Rachel slid past him and started down the stairs before stopping. “Thank you for letting me stay. I do appreciate it.”
Harry felt obscene holding the money, ridiculous and immoral all at the same time, like he’d just tried to pay her for something more than medicine. And she’d walked away from him. She was leaving.
He tried to go after her. He took a step toward the stairs even though the thought of trying to go down them scared him. He’d lost so much in the past few days—so much feeling, so much movement. His hands and his legs were weak unless he had the medicine. When he had the medicine he was all right, better than all right. He was almost as good as new. When he didn’t have it, he was worse than he had ever been, and if he’d known that going in, maybe he wouldn’t have started taking it. But he had started, and there was nothing for it. She had to tell him who else had access to the medicine. Someone would want to sell it to him.
He was going after Dr. Bell. Becca didn’t need to get involved, but he hadn’t found any logic that worked with her. He didn’t need the medicine to see her now. She came to him even when it had been hours—almost a day—since he had taken anything. After he had gone to bed, she came back to him. She was wearing different clothes, and she didn’t look like someone who had fallen from a balcony. And of course, she hadn’t. That other woman had. That poor woman, and who knew if she had been in control? He had been so sure it was Becca. So sure. Even now it was hard to believe … and those things he’d said … he never would have if Becca hadn’t made him think it was her. She had, hadn’t she? Everything was so jumbled.
Becca scared him. She stayed in his room with him all night, pacing and humming and talking about things she had done as a child. And Harry knew it wasn’t real. He told himself it wasn’t. And he looked away and squeezed his eyes closed, and he tried to sleep, but every time he opened them again, she was there.
And here she was again. She had stood behind him the entire time, and now as he was going after Rachel, she got impatient and pushed past. He felt it. He felt her hand on his arm and the weight of her shoving him off balance. Harry fell into the small decorative table Maggie had put in the corner. It jabbed into his hip, and his hand slipped off his cane. He went down on one knee, his elbow hitting hard on the table.
“No,” he called at the two backs retreating down the stairs. “Don’t go!”
Harry didn’t know which of the women he was talking to, and neither of them turned around.
36.
“Rachel? Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
She wasn’t at all all right, but she hadn’t meant to yelp like that. She’d sounded like a coyote pup, and everyone had looked up, including Hooper, who was now standing over her.
“Let me see it.”
Rachel set her jaw. She didn’t have time for this, and at the same time, she didn’t want to pique anyone’s curiosity. It was a difficult call, but she held out her hand.
Rachel had come down to the site with her hood pulled up. She’d stayed in the background, ducking into the corner of the tent away from most of the day-shift workers, who were clustered around the stereo microscopes and laptops on the other side. This back corner, where the generator was, had become the dumping ground for whatever supplies weren’t in use. There were still-wet waders that would mildew, half-full boxes of petri dishes, glass slides, vials and flasks of all descriptions, collection nets, and the economy-size tubs of snack mix and chocolate-covered raisins that had made up half the team’s calories for the past week.
She had knelt down to go through the boxes, looking for the largest containers she could find, as many as she could find. The sand shifted under her feet, and she’d reached out to steady herself. She’d done it without thinking and without looking, and she’d put her hand on the generator, which was nothing but a combustion engine. It was like running your car five hundred miles and then grabbing some of the metal under the hood. If she’d heard her skin sizzle and stick like meat on a grill, it would not have surprised her. Everyone was concerned, but she had, of course, been through worse.
“You’re down early,” Hooper said. He had on his reading glasses and was holding her palm, which was bright red, up close to his face.
“Wanted to get a head start. Tonight’s the last night.”
“That’s what the history books tell us,” Hooper said, which wasn’t the same thing as “yes.” Scientists were raised to avoid definitive statements. Things “appeared so” and “were consistent with.” Rachel was so used to it, did it so much herself, that she didn’t even notice it anymore.
“The samples we’re collecting now are sluggish,” Hooper went on. “Definite decrease in their activity levels.”
Rachel furrowed her brow. She hoped this wouldn’t complicate their transportation.
“We suspect the females are laying eggs today. It would be fantastic if we could get them to do it in captivity, but they’re all dying within two hours of pulling them out of the water.”
Hooper was trying to keep them? When had that started? She hadn’t seen any tanks or heard any talk. She almost opened her mouth, but quickly pushed the impulse aside. Hooper, it seemed, was waiting for her to comment, but when she didn’t, he went on.
“It’s bad,” he said, rolling her hand to catch a better light. “But I’ve seen worse. It’ll blister and hurt like hell, but as long as you keep it clean, it’ll heal. John”—Hooper raised his voice and called over his shoulder—“would you bring me the first aid kit?”
Rachel’s body went rigid just as if someone had poured quick-set cement into her. Hooper felt it.
“Did something hurt?”
John came over with the white metal box they kept stashed under one of the worktables. “Accident?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?” Rachel demanded.
“Probably the same thing you are,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”
“Rachel put her hand on the generator,” Hooper said, holding out her palm for John’s inspection. “Can you put a bandage on it?”
John had set the kit down on top of one of the boxes and quickly undid the metal latches, revealing all manner of Band-Aids, gauzes, and ointments.
Rachel yanked her hand back fro
m both men. “You stay the hell away from me.”
John didn’t answer.
“If you follow me again, so help me God.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Hooper demanded.
Rachel didn’t give John time to talk. “He’s been following me for days, spying on me. Last night he chased me into the road.”
“Last night? When last night?” Hooper demanded.
“During our shift,” Rachel said. “Two—two-thirty.”
John crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. Laughter came from the other side of the tent, and he looked over his shoulder to see what was funny, making it clear Rachel wasn’t so important as to demand all of his attention. When he turned, Rachel saw his tattoo clearly, each of the black dots equidistant from the others, marching up his neck like a regiment of soldiers. She wanted to scratch them off with her fingernails.
“Rachel.” Hooper was using the sort of low, slow voice you use with children having a tantrum. “John could not have done anything to you last night.”
“Like hell he didn’t. He ran after me through the woods.”
“John spent all of last shift doing classifications. He was here.”
“No,” Rachel said. “He left.”
Hooper shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Rachel cut him off. “He left. He always leaves. You can’t always be paying attention. He says he’s going to the bathroom or—or—something, and then he doesn’t come back. You wouldn’t even notice.”
“Rachel,” Hooper said, “I’m telling you. I would notice. Just like I notice when you leave.”
She could feel a hot blush spreading across her neck. “He followed me! He chased me. He was trying to scare me. He ran after me and forced me into the road. There was a car—”
Hooper shook his head.
“There was a car!” Rachel was shouting, and she wasn’t sure when that had started. “I almost died!”
“John,” Hooper said, “why don’t you give us a minute?”
“No! Why are you protecting him?”
John turned and walked toward the microscopes. All the researchers who weren’t out in the water were staring, and Hooper put his hand on her arm, pushing and steering her out of the tent. Rachel reached down and snagged the cardboard box of containers she’d come for, ignoring the pain in her hand. It didn’t matter anyway. She could take something for that.
Hooper steered her up the beach until they were against the scrub brush.
“I have to get back to work,” she said.
“Rachel, I’m sending you home. I think you haven’t been sleeping enough.” Rachel yanked her arm away from his hand. “I should have seen the signs earlier,” he went on. “That’s my fault. But I see them now, and I want you to get some help. I’m going to make some calls for you.”
Rachel let out a bark of laughter. She knew what he was doing. She recognized it from the instruction sheet posted on the wall of the lab back at the university. It was posted on the walls of all the labs right next to the fire evacuation route and what to do in case of an earthquake. He was walking her through what to do if a colleague has a mental breakdown, that little sheet she’d thought was so funny for years. And it was. It was goddamn hysterical.
* * *
When Rachel had gone, Hooper turned to John. “If you know anything that might help,” the professor said, “now would be the time.”
John flashed red with anger. He had said something. He had gone to Hooper days before and gotten the door slammed in his face. And now? What could he say that would make any difference now? “Look at the woman!” he wanted to shout. Was it any wonder that his ancestors thought men that high had crossed to another plane? Was it any wonder they feared not being able to return? He had warned Hooper. He had warned Rachel. He had warned and warned, and no one had listened until this. And now that he was thinking about it, really thinking about it, he had been doing classifications the night before, just as Hooper had said, but Hooper wouldn’t know that. He hadn’t been there.
37.
Tip would arrive on the early-afternoon ferry. Even after Tilda had found her way to the public docks, lowered her sail, and tied up, she still had more than an hour to kill.
Carpenter’s Island had only one town, now called Cussler’s Ferry. Josiah Cussler had been the first white person to settle on the island. He was a preacher who had begun his career as a prospector, at which he had failed spectacularly. When he settled on the island, he brought with him one legal wife and three others that he called spiritual wives. Together they formed a church and attempted to recruit others to move to what was then an almost inaccessible settlement. People did eventually come to Cussler’s Ferry, but few, if any, joined Josiah’s church. The good preacher was eventually killed and partially eaten by a bear but not before fathering nearly two dozen children, making Cussler a popular surname on the island even today.
It was the sort of local tale that Tilda loved and loved to tell to other people who had somehow gone their entire lives without hearing it. She had told Tip, who had been mostly interested in the bear. She thought that rather missed a lot, but, as they had been planning a hike, it was understandable.
The public docks were just two blocks from the main road through Cussler’s Ferry, which contained nearly every commercial shop on the island. Less affluent than Olloo’et, there were no five-dollar coffees or animal-accessory shops. The town did cater to hikers and backpackers during the high season with an outdoor outfitter on one corner and a pizza shop on the other. There was also a taco stand and a doughnut shop, both of which were closed, whether for the day, the winter, or indefinitely wasn’t clear.
Tilda went into a pharmacy-slash-convenience store, which also sold fishing and trapping permits. The clerk, wearing a blue apron over a slightly premature holiday sweater, watched Tilda walk in but did not greet her. The tile under her feet was worn, the lighting somewhat sickly, and the whole place smelled of iodine and the hot dogs rotating on a metal warmer near the cash register.
Tilda had eaten nothing that day, and her stomach felt hollow. But even in that state, the hot dogs, with their shriveled ends, looked terrible. She decided instead on a bag of M&M’s, a canister of honey-roasted nuts, some raisins, and two single-serving boxes of Cheerios, being careful to check the sell-by date on everything.
Outside, she stopped at a bench and unloaded her sack. One by one, she opened each item and poured it into the plastic bag, disposing of the containers in a nearby trash can. Then she shook the whole thing. The M&M’s did tend to settle to the bottom, but other than that, it was serviceable. She carried it around the outfitter store, fishing out handfuls while she looked at dehydrated ravioli packets and camping bowls that collapsed flat like accordions. When enough time had passed, she wiped her hand off on her jeans and went to go meet Tip.
He walked off the ferry with a full-size hiker’s pack on his back, crossed the distance between them in two steps, and took up her mouth with his. She could taste mint on his tongue.
“What’s in the pack?” Tilda asked when he’d let her go.
“A late lunch,” he said.
Tilda held up her trail mix. “I cooked, too.”
He looked in the sack. “Are those Cheerios?”
“It felt like it needed a starch.”
He laughed and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her tight to his side in a way that made her stutter-step. It was difficult to walk pinned to him, and she pulled away. He looked at her sideways but let it go, launching into a stream of chatter about a new grill man at the restaurant.
She listened, waiting for an opportunity to tell him about the sailboat. Once or twice he took a breath, and Tilda started to open her mouth, but then it would turn out that he wasn’t done and more words would pour out. He continued on as they wound their way down a short residential street off the main strip, following the white arrows on the state park signs toward the trailhead. No one else from the ferry went th
is way, and within ten minutes they were alone.
Tilda had stopped listening. She wanted to tell him about her boat. She wanted there to be an opening to tell him about her boat, but his monologue had taken them all the way to the end of the street where asphalt became a dirt path into the trees.
The path was narrow, and he went ahead. He had stopped talking, but now talking was too difficult. He would have had to turn all the way around to see her, and she didn’t want to talk to his back. This thing she had done, this big thing of fixing a boat entirely on her own, mattered to her. She wanted someone to appreciate it, to listen while she described the smell of newly mixed epoxy. She wanted him to want to see it, to ask her to take him out, maybe even right now. She had wanted the conversation she wanted when she wanted it, and she hadn’t gotten it. She could have interrupted. She could have stopped and insisted he turn around right then, but she had already gone and upset herself.
It was a childish thing. She knew it was childish. She stopped for a moment, took a breath, and told herself she was letting it go. She didn’t know if she was or not, but she wanted to.
Stopped, she no longer had to look at her shoes or his pack. She could see the trees that had swallowed up the two of them, swallowed them completely in such a short distance. It was like a fairy tale where the wood seals itself around the wandering children. The trail had been kept clear, but the same ferns from Olloo’et were here. New leaves sprouted from their middle, reaching up first in a perfect spiral before unfurling their fiddlehead shape into a long leafy stem. Here and there would be a fallen tree the earth was trying to reclaim. Toadstools sprouted from the rotted parts. The little funguses were every color from creamy white to pumpkin orange and looked delicate and thin, like tiny umbrellas. Tilda saw a salamander scuttle across the fallen needles. The ground was wet and covered with mulched and rotted tree bark the dark red of an Irish setter. It made it easy to spot the bright yellow banana slug that ventured across the path like a pedestrian trying to cross a freeway. Sensing her approach, it pulled in its antenna and curled into a ball.
