by Leito, Chad
“Be safe,” Asa said, shortly. “And I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jen nodded, and the corners of her mouth tugged downward for a moment. “You too, Palmer.” Then, her wings shot out and she took off.
Asa splashed more water on his face. “Wake up,” he said to himself. He felt that he couldn’t think. He felt like he wasn’t smart enough to find a solution to all the problems he was facing.
Without warning, Asa began to cry, alone, by the waterline.
It was all of it, he supposed. Things were just piling up, one after another. There was, of course, the biggest concern—which was the upcoming Multiplier attack on the Academy. But there were other things, too. Like, considering how he would explain to Roxanne that Bruce had been killed in front of their eyes. Or, worrying about Stan, and Janice. Then there was Charlotte—Asa did not know if she was dead or not. Did she make it back from her run?
“STOP CRYING!” Asa said to himself loud enough to make crows take flight in nearby trees. He looked around, wide-eyed. I’m going crazy, he thought with a little chuckle. All the stress is making me lose it. You’re talking to yourself. Get it together, Asa!
He stood, wiped the tears away with the heel of his hand, and began to trudge up the dirt path towards Conway’s cabin. He felt disturbed and upset. He wished that he could go back to feeing numb.
When he reached the door, he borrowed the key Conway kept atop the doorjamb and let himself inside.
Ozzie roared ferociously, and came tearing over the living room toward Asa, teeth exposed.
“It’s me, Ozzie. Hush.”
The polar bear’s grimace was gone in a flash, and Ozzie wagged his little white tail. He wiggled up to Asa, whining with his ears back, begging to be greeted.
“You and me have come a long way, friend,” Asa whispered to Ozzie as he scratched behind the polar bear’s ears. The living room was dark and quiet, except for the dozens of clocks ticking away on the wall. Asa guessed that Conway was away on some mission. Otherwise, he would have come out to see who had entered.
Asa wondered what it would be like, being a graduate. He wondered what kinds of things the Academy sent them out to do. He imagined that some of it must actually be humanitarian work, otherwise, why would Conway and McCoy and all the other graduates stay?
“Asa? Everything okay?” Mama croaked from her bed in a room off the back hallway. Her hearing was so good that she would have known it was Asa by his footsteps, even if he hadn’t spoken to Ozzie.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said to her. “I’m sorry to wake you. I know it’s late. I just wanted to go see how Teddy was doing.”
“No problem. Go right ahead. He’s still up. It sounds like he’s talking to himself down there. He’s whispering. I can’t make out what he’s saying.”
“Okay, goodnight, Mama.”
“Yes, dear, goodnight.”
Asa moved towards the basement, and couldn’t hear a thing. Once again, Mama’s hearing amazed him. He hoped that Teddy was mentally well. Talking to himself didn’t sound good. Asa sometimes worried about Teddy, being locked inside a cell all that time.
I just got done screaming at myself, Asa remembered.
Ozzie crawled back into Mama’s bedroom and Asa opened the door to the basement. The door was well oiled, and didn’t make a sound. Asa crept down the steps, and it wasn’t until he was four or five steps from the floor that he was able to hear what Mama could from her bedroom—Teddy’s hushed voice.
Asa peaked around the basement wall, and looked past Conway’s workout equipment to Teddy. He was hunched over some red and white contraption, whispering hurriedly. There was a quiet metallic voice talking from the machine. Teddy looked angry.
Teddy looked up, saw Asa, and blushed. He turned something on the small, red and white device, and then classical music began to play instead of the voice.
“Hello, Asa!” Teddy said, getting to his feet.
Asa moved across the room and sat down on the bench press. Closer now, Asa could see that the small machine that Teddy had been talking into was made out of coke cans. “What is that?” Asa asked.
Teddy turned red and smiled nervously, showing his black gums. “It’s a radio.”
“Oh yeah?” Asa said. “I forgot you said that you were going to make one. That’s impressive.”
Teddy nodded. “Thanks. It still can’t get very loud, but I’m able to get some AM stations.”
“Teddy, were you talking into the radio?”
A small chill went up Asa’s spine as he remembered something that Rose had said to Joney out in the jungle. “So, did you hear back from the little one on the radio?”
Teddy waved a hand. “Yeah. But it’s stupid. I like to listen to talk radio, and well—this is embarrassing—I like to talk back to it. I don’t get many visitors here. It’s no one’s fault, just a bad situation. But I like to sometimes pretend like I’m arguing with them.”
Asa looked at the little box again, and wondered if Teddy was somehow communicating with other Multipliers. He decided against it. How would Teddy even know that they had a radio? And, he probably does get bored down here—he needed a radio—it makes sense that he was talking to it. And he does look embarrassed. He’s not talking to Multipliers, that’s crazy.
Teddy spoke and it jostled Asa out of his thoughts; “Are you okay, Asa? Has something happened tonight?”
Asa sighed, and completely forgot about Teddy’s radio for a time. All his energy went to thinking about the events that had happened since he had spoken with Stan. “Yeah,” Asa said. He frowned. “Something has happened. A lot of things, actually. And, I kind of came down here to see if you would be willing to help me sort through everything. I need advice, Teddy.”
Teddy leaned forward so that two thick, vertical bars framed his face. “I’m here for you, Asa. Tell me what happened.”
So, Asa began to tell the stories. Teddy was a great listener. He nodded along, and asked questions and made comments indicating that he sympathized with Asa, and also really wanted to understand. Asa thought, even though he’s a Multiplier now, he’s still my friend. At that time, he was thankful that Conway had allowed Asa to keep him. Teddy was genuinely shocked to hear that Stan had met up with Asa and expressed that Multipliers had been interrogating him. Asa told Teddy about what Allen said about attacking the next day. When Teddy heard that Bruce had been killed, he whispered: “I’m so sorry.” The thing that Teddy seemed most interested in was the lair behind the waterfall. He asked questions about the kinds of rocks surrounding the waterfall, asked Asa to estimate the exact height, and asked Asa how thick the falling water was—“Do you think it was more than two feet thick?” Asa couldn’t remember. He recollected most of the entire story just how it had happened to Teddy. He forgot the thing that Rose said about a radio conversation for the time, and he was so wrapped up in his conversation with Teddy that he even forgot about the aluminum radio on the floor.
When Asa was done speaking, Teddy asked: “So what do you want to do about these things?”
Asa ran a hand threw his hair. “I don’t know!”
Teddy put up his hands patiently. “Let’s start on the most basic level—do you want to stay at the Academy, or do you think that you should run away.”
“We’ve already talked about this, Teddy, I’m not leaving the Academy.”
“Okay, okay,” Teddy said. “No reason to get worked up, I just want to walk through the options here.” He smiled, showing his black gums. “I think it’s good to talk about your reasoning for things; it helps more than you think. I know that you’ve already been through this with me, but could you re-explain why you want to stay at the Academy?”
Asa was frustrated, but he also saw that Teddy was trying to help. “Sure. Boom Boom was the one who came up with this argument, but I agree with it. I’m afraid that if I leave the mountains, that I’ll be no safer than if I stay here. I think that if I leave, they’ll attack, take over the Academy, and then the world. Th
ey’d change me or kill me no matter what. But if I stay and fight, I might be able to kill a few of them. Who knows, if there are enough students and graduates here when they attack, we might even win.”
Teddy looked up at the ceiling as he thought about this. His pupils were now completely back to a normal size. The giant gash on the left side of his face had healed into hard, plastic-like scar tissue, but at least you couldn’t see his teeth anymore when his mouth was closed. Asa recollected that this was their first conversation in which Teddy hadn’t asked Asa to go back to his dwelling and retrieve some of the drug, Vipocrit, for him. “Just so I know that I’m understanding you—what you’re saying is that no matter what you do, you’re probably going to get bitten or be killed, so you would rather have one of those things happen to you while defending the Academy?”
“Yes.”
Teddy smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. I agree with you. I think that that plan makes sense. And I think that I have an idea.”
“You do? Great!” Asa knew that coming and talking to Teddy was a good idea. “What is it?”
“Before I tell you, I want you to remember that you said that you wanted to stay and fight—you think that you’re going to die or get bitten no matter what.”
“Okay.”
Teddy paused a beat. “I think that you should go and try to blow up the Multiplier’s lair.”
“What? How?”
“With the bombs that Mike Plode made. You said that they’re in Viola’s dwelling, right?”
“You want me to sneak over to their waterfall tonight, and try to lay bombs down in an area that is potentially housing tens of thousands of Multipliers?”
Teddy smiled. “Well, not tonight, but yes. If you really want to fight these guys, you’ve got to find a better way of fighting them than hand-to-hand. You saw what happened to Bruce. You know how much stronger they are than you.”
“You’re right,” Asa said.
“Listen, I can’t be for sure, because I didn’t see the waterfall, but I think that there is a chance that you could make the whole cave behind it collapse, and kill a bunch of them. You said that the waterfall was really wide—I bet that the cave behind it is too. Think of the mouth of the cave like a giant doorjamb. Each piece of rock that layers the outside is holding up thousands of pounds of rock and water. If you were able to place five or six of Boom Boom’s bombs along one of the side walls on the mouth of the cave, I think that the whole thing could implode.”
Asa thought about this. It didn’t seem intuitive, but then again, Teddy was much better at physics than he was. “But what if they catch me?” he asked.
Teddy raised his eyebrows—the expression made the inelastic scar tissue on his left cheek lift up dramatically. “If they catch you, you’re going to either be bitten or killed. But, that’s already going to happen, isn’t it. This way, you would go down swinging. If you go and try to drop the bombs, you can know that you at least tried your best.”
“Should anyone come with me, do you think?”
Teddy shrugged. “It’s up to you. I don’t think that it matters.”
Asa shook his head. “No. It only takes one person to place the bombs. I don’t want to endanger anyone else. But why shouldn’t I go tonight?”
Teddy chuckled: “Have you looked in a mirror, Asa? You’re exhausted! No offense, but I’ve never seen you look so worn out.”
Asa thought back to when he splashed himself with the water in the Moat, and felt so incredibly numb. He still wasn’t thinking as well as usual. His whole body felt heavy and sluggish; he couldn’t imagine taking another trip out through the arctic jungle to the Multiplier’s lair.
Teddy met Asa’s eyes. “Go get some rest. That’s what you need to do. Then, you need to play your heart out during the Winggame Championship. I don’t think that the Multipliers are going to attack then. All the students will be there, sure, but they can all fly, and the match will be outside. I think that they’ll attack sometime at the dance. There will be alcohol there, right?”
“That’s what I heard.”
Teddy looked sick with worry. “They’ll attack three or four hours after the dance starts, I’m sure of it. That way, everyone will be under one roof, and a large majority of the students and graduates will be intoxicated.”
Asa brought his hand to his mouth. “I think that you’re right.”
“It’ll be a perfect scenario for them to attack.”
Asa wondered if Robert King had any idea of what was about to unfold. He suddenly felt cold. He thought about Jen, and the fact that he would leave her at the dance tomorrow to go try and make a cave collapse on ten thousand Multipliers. He looked at Teddy’s gums, which were black, and imagined feeling hot Salvaserum drip onto his neck as yawning jaws came down to bite him…
“ASA!”
Asa jumped. “What?”
“You completely just zoned out on me. I think that you need to go to bed. You’re so exhausted.”
Asa looked at the radio again, and then back at Teddy. Can I trust him? Asa thought that he could. He stood, and put out his hand to shake. Teddy took it gently, and pulled him in for a hug. They put their arms through the bars and hugged each other. Teddy could have bitten Asa, but he didn’t.
“I really appreciate you listening to me,” Asa said.
“I’m so proud of you for being so brave,” Teddy said.
“I might die tomorrow. I want you to know that you’re my best friend and I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Asa left shortly after that. He shut the door to Mama’s dwelling behind him and flew up to Viola’s. As his wings flapped in the cool night air, he thought that he had made a good decision in talking to Teddy. Now, he felt much better about what had happened with Bruce. He wasn’t able to bring Bruce back from the dead—that was impossible—but he could get revenge.
34
The Last Team Meeting
The remaining seven members of the Sharks sat for the last time in the damp, concrete, underground room that the teams could use before a match. The players were suited up in their blue and green Winggame uniforms. Outside, the crowd was deafening. Hard rock music was playing from enormous, floating speakers above the water, and students and faculty alike were cheering, screaming, and stomping their feet on the metal bleachers.
The Sharks met before this in Viola’s dwelling to discuss what had happened last night. Bruce, being dead, hadn’t been there. Asa thought that Roxanne must have suspected the news before she received it. She had entered Viola’s dwelling very pale, and obsessively kept looking across the table, as though thinking she must have just missed Bruce. She sat still as Jen told the story of what had happened. When Jen got to the part where Allen found Bruce in the restraining closet, Roxanne began to breath heavily with her fist pushed up against her mouth. Her eyes turned red as Jen recounted the interrogation. In the end, Jen simply said, “he was killed,” and left out the gruesome details. Hot tears slid down Roxanne’s cheeks, but she did not scream or cry out, or have any loud output of emotions.
Looking at Roxanne now, in the damp, cold meeting room, Asa came to the conclusion that she must feel like Asa had felt last night—numb. She wasn’t making eye contact with anyone. Her eyes were puffy and red, but no tears came.
Asa felt incredibly guilty.
I can’t bring Bruce back, but I can try to get revenge.
Asa hadn’t told anyone about his meeting with Teddy, the plan with the bombs, or about Teddy talking into his Coke can radio. Asa had decided not to let anyone know that he intended to place bombs around the waterfall that night, because he wanted to do it alone. He saw no use in anyone coming with him. Looking at Roxanne, he thought that he might go insane if he was responsible for the death of another person today.
When he awoke, he had initially thought of Teddy’s radio, and wondered for a moment if he had been using it to communicate with the Multipliers. For the second time, Asa decided that the thought was ab
surd. He hugged me! Why wouldn’t he have bitten me if he were planning something against me? Not wanting to give anyone false suspicions, Asa also decided to keep this part of the conversation to himself.
“What play are we going to run?” Lilly Bloodroot asked.
Instinctively, Asa looked at Roxanne, and saw that new tears had emerged from her eyes. Bruce had always been the one to pick the plays. Asa knew from experience that little memories sometimes exacerbated the sense of loss more than anything else. After the Wolf Flu took his mother, he would sometimes sit in her old Volvo, inhale her aroma, and cry by himself in the garage.
No one answered Lilly’s question. The Sharks weren’t really sure who should take charge now that Bruce was gone.
The Sharks had lower moral than ever before. There was a sulky mood in the air. The cheers from outside seemed to taunt them. The Wolves, with twenty-five players and being undefeated, seemed like an impossible opponent for the Sharks to overcome. Even if Bruce, Stan, and Janice were still on the team, the odds would not have been in their favor. Without them, winning seemed unimaginable to Asa.
He felt apathetic about the prospect. It was hard to care about winning with all that had happened since Stan had visited Viola’s and told Asa about Allen and the other Multipliers. A dark thought crossed Asa’s mind: If the Academy doesn’t catch Stan and Janice, I bet that the Hive will go after them. They’ve already broken Stan’s arm. They’ll probably kill him if they ever get their hands on him.
Mike Plode broke the silence, but he did not answer Lilly’s question. “I think that they will attack two weeks from now, when the semester is really over. I know that it’s over for some students after today, but the Fishies are still working on their Blood Canaries.”
