Bloodback

by Darby Harn

  I brush her cheek. “I knew your name.”

  “Uh huh. They know you. They love you. You share yourself with them, and I never get to be with you, Kit.”

  Before this happened, my life was small. Sealed off, like the Quarantine Zone. I didn’t know any of the other people in the apartment building, and I’ve been here half my life. Other people are hard. Connecting is. The Myriad connects me to everything. Energy. Knowledge. Other states of being. I know people, now. I know myself. But this thing in my chest isn’t the difference in my life. I don’t always link up. I don’t always fire. With Abi, I do. Abi keeps me together. Focused. And she’s the one who suffers for it.

  “I’m sorry, Abi.”

  “You’re afraid, I know. You’re not going to hurt me. Besides, even if you do…” She pats her behind. “I can take it.”

  “But what if…”

  Her lips shadow mine. “Kiss me.”

  “If I accidentally acquire you…”

  “Then I’ll be inside you,” she says. “Right? In the Myriad? And then you could become me, or something? Ooh. That could get interesting.”

  “It could get complicated.”

  “Kiss me and stuff.”

  Nothing is impossible. I know that better than most. Another thing I know better: just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. Some things are best left alone.

  I withdraw from her. “I’ll be back.”

  She tries to smile, but it’s sore. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  I drift out of the office back to the roof, into the uncertain sky, my light quickly obscured in snow.

  Streets white out. Wood snaps. Snow crashes. Not sure if it’s branches or roofs collapsing in the distance. Probably both. A funereal quiet clings to the city as I hover over the Halfway Hotel. In winter, The Derelicts shrinks. Slows. The arthritis of the city constricts, and she barely functions. Half a mile away, concrete shudders against steel. Plows shove aside the snow along the shore of the narrow peninsula The Derelicts shadows. Christmas lights strand the exteriors of the bars and restaurants along Claremont. Sunshine breaks across Break Pointe as stubborn winter clouds yield to the Blackwood Building, a gleaming portal cracked open to another world entirely.

  That shit coffee Dr. Piller made everyday in Applied Sciences burns my tongue. The salt of the French fries from the commissary prickles my lips. I never drank soda or ate any of the junk food greasing out under hot lamps, but now I want them. The fizz. The sugar sweet. The cold numb in my temple.

  That life, that was never quite mine.

  Vidette’s restless aura bristles in the magnetic net I always cast as she paces the roof of the Halfway Hotel. This woman. If I could hook her up to my engine. Perpetual energy.

  I sink to the roof, long peeled of its shingles. “We’re not going to get through the winter.”

  Vidette rubs my back. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Not everyone can walk through three feet of snow, Vi.”

  “Get me a snowplow. I’ll strap it on. I’ll have these streets cleared for you in a jiff.”

  I track the heavy, yellow trucks barreling down the peninsula, across the river. “We’d have to steal one.”

  “My evening is open.”

  “It’s supposed to be thirty below tonight.”

  Vidette turns her back to the wind, nose red from the cold. “This? This is nothing. ’84? You should have seen that.”

  “There was electricity in 1984. Heat. Roofs.”

  “Honestly, it wasn’t much different than it is now.”

  I peer over the edge of the roof, watching someone struggle through the weeks of snow across the intersection. I can’t imagine where they’d be going, or why they‘d be outside.

  “I think we should put our effort into relocating people. Try and get them some starting money. A bus ticket. Something. Get them somewhere they have a chance. And heat.”

  “How much is a month’s rent and deposit in Chicago?”

  “I imagine it’s cheaper than a funeral.”

  “We can’t give up. Not now.”

  Vidette draws me back from the edge. We can touch. Her strength makes her skin diamond. Nothing can penetrate it. Not even me. Too bad Vidette isn’t my type.

  Or, you know. A lesbian.

  “This is our home, Kit. This is our duty, for better and worse.”

  I pinch and pull at the leather of my jacket, hard and sharp in the cold. “I can’t do this.”

  “You can.”

  “I can’t. Abi… I can’t.”

  Vidette puts her hand on my shoulder. “It’s ok. This is normal. You can’t be everywhere. And you can’t fix everything. It hurts. But you’ve got to have faith, Kit.”

  I honestly don’t know what that is. It’s not faith I have for a brighter future for the city. If I think about it, I’m not thinking about it at all. I’m not feeling anything about it. I’m just doing it, until I can’t, and then I panic. What do I do. How do I fix it. Pick up the pieces. Don’t think. Don’t feel.

  Don’t fear.

  “You keep moving, and help who you can,” Vidette says. “On that note. Why I’m here. I’m thinking maybe you need to do your thing and hack into the GP mainframe again.”

  “Because that’s legal.”

  “I’m not exactly Employee of the Month over at the tower, so I’m not getting anywhere on finding out if there have been any wolf-related injuries to GP personnel lately. Touch a phone or whatever you do, and download some medical files.”

  There hasn’t been so much as a word out of the Blackwood Building since the battle. I’m not sure I want to go kicking the hornet’s nest right now by hacking their computer system.

  “We could find out if there have been any injuries,” I say, “and try and find the Bloodbacks at the same time.”

  Vidette’s face scrunches. “No.”

  “Dr. Piller – "

  “Sold us out to Blackwood. He sold you out.”

  “He can start making up for it by tracking the wolves,” I say. “Can you talk to him, Vi? Please.”

  “He couldn’t find them before,” she says.

  Maybe the consciousness of the wolves wasn’t as mature as it is now, thirty years later. Or, my luck, they’re as good at hiding their mental tracks as they are the others.

  “We don’t have any other option,” I say.

  Vidette tears her glove off, and swipes at her PEAL. “I’m going to need a drink after this.”

  Piller’s voice squawks out of the imperceptible speakers of the PEAL. “Vi… I’m so glad you called – ”

  “Shut up, Ronnie. Here’s what you’re going to do.”

  Tracks stamp the hardened snow covering Brewster Park in thin lines vanishing between naked trees. To me, they’re no different from most dogs. The points of the little crowns the wolves make are less obvious, maybe. Dead leaves, twigs and an uneven terrain of exposed roots and rocks muddy the trail. Before 1968, Brewster Park had been the green heart beating between the industrial lungs of Break Pointe. Now, outside of the poached iron gates and crumbling brick walls lining the old perimeter, the park is more or less indistinguishable from the untended nature that has reclaimed much of the island.

  Take a left, Piller says in my head, from somewhere beyond the park. I shiver every time he whispers between my ears.

  Do you sense them?

  I sense something. A void. It’s strange.

  A void in thought? Was that what you experienced when you betrayed me to Professor Blackwood?

  Hang a right.

  Dead trees give to shimmering ones. Leaves glow like static flame. Radiation made much of the city unlivable, or so they said. Life adapts. Evolves. Acquires the characteristics of its circumstances. Trees blink at me in red warning.

  Stop.

  I keep going. A smooth bulb of exposed limestone, like the crown of a buried skull, rests heavy along faded footpaths. Stumps of clawed down trees give to rocks, piled in conical mounds. The
mounds are slim, and slightly crescent. In some ways, they remind me of the beehive-like constructions in monasteries back in Ireland, but I doubt these particular arrangements were the art of the park’s planners. The mounds branch east and west in a steadily rising arc, outward from a dark cave, the mouth built of stacked limestone.

  Some old German folktales start like this. Or end.

  At least you’re not wearing a red cape, Piller says.

  Little Red Riding Hood is a European folktale. The Brothers Grimm popularized it. It’s not German.

  You needed to point that out.

  Knowledge is a gift, Dr. Piller.

  Here’s some knowledge for you. He’s right behind you.

  Yellow eyes glow in the thicket behind me. Steam shrouds my view as the wolf idles like the engine of an old car.

  How do I let him know I’m here to talk? There’s no answer. Dr. Piller? Where did you go?

  The wolf stalks out of the trees. Why come?

  “I come in peace.”

  His eyes slender as he considers me. Then, just like that, he scampers past me into the cave. No. Birds.

  I extend my magnetic field. The tassel of birds and bats tethered to me coil away into the sky. This is probably a bad idea. Usually is with me. But I do what I always do; I find my way into the dark.

  Four

  This heat wells out of the earth, like a subway tunnel. Damp, wet leaves plaster the ground. Bones gnawed beyond recognition. Worms lace hollow eye sockets. The path slopes deeper into the earth. Bricks of mismatched limestone arc overhead. I don’t think the cave was part of the original park. The wolves must have constructed this, telekinetically. My guide keeps straight, on a steady descent into the cave, dripping and dark, until my gasp echoes into a boundless dark.

  Crowns of deer antlers rise out of earthen mounds. Feathers hang off the antlers. Loose teeth. Claws. God. The ceiling. Packs of wolves clawed in the stone. As they roam boxy drawings of buildings, the wolves were painted in mud and then finally blood. Weeds of rabbit ears. Bushes of squirrel tails. Deer dominate the landscape, their antlers growing to mirror the paths through the park above us, the streets of the city, all leading back to a single, giant deer painted above. Antlers like lightning streams. Glowing skin like cat’s eyes.

  “Beautiful…”

  Twin suns dawn in the cave. That big wolf, twice the size of others, prowls out of the dark. The hair on her sides is bald, exposing her skin. Scars trace out the shapes of rabbits and snakes and deer, like she cut them herself. The wolf sits on her haunches, head crooked as she considers me.

  Why come, Star Walker?

  “Thank you for letting me come here… this place is…”

  Why?

  “I want to find out what happened,” I say.

  Humans kill Lamar. Now you come to kill us.

  “I’m not here to kill anyone. I’m here to help.”

  She sneers, kind of. How?

  “There’s a list I should keep to, but honestly I’m just really curious how it is you know English.”

  Your words crude. Simple.

  “An bhfuil sé seo simplí??”

  Being clever no help you, Star Walker, the wolf says. Many clever bones buried in snow.

  What am I doing? What do I have to gain by being smart with a telepathic wolf? I always do this. My first instinct whenever I’m cornered is to deflect with some glib or pithy response meant to establish my intellect. If nothing else, I was always smarter; most of my life has been a gauntlet of others putting down my looks, my interests, my mere existence but I always had a ledge to stand on they could never reach. I just never let them know the ledge was deep inside a bottomless pit.

  “Let’s start over. I’m Kitsie. What’s your name?”

  Siski.

  “Siski…” Despite the size differential, there’s something soft in Siski’s eyes. Something maternal. “You said his name was Lamar? I don’t know how Lamar died. My fear was it was someone Empowered, but no one across the river has been injured, that we can tell.”

  Strong among Empowered.

  “There are,” I say. “Can we examine the body?”

  Siski gazes mournfully at a mound. An immature antler tilts in fresh earth. God. This is him. Lamar. I regret disturbing such a sacred place, even as I marvel at my fortune in being here.

  With tools? Siski says. With science?

  That last word comes with a sneer. My focus drifts back to the cave paintings, and the glorious, electric deer.

  “Why the deer?” I say.

  Siski’s head crooks. Deer give life.

  “You eat them.”

  Siski looks to the mounds. We give life to deer.

  This deer is their god. I try to wrap my head around the idea of deer-worshipping wolves, but I can’t; in any case, it’s not why I’m here. “We’ll be respectful,” I say. “We want to find the truth. We want to have peace, just like you.”

  Siski lowers her head, as if in thought. Wolves around the cave lift theirs. Their heads bob up and down, as if they’re listening; as if they’re speaking to each other. I can’t hear. The Bloodbacks have locked me out of their conversation. They must have locked Dr. Piller out as well.

  That’s not terrifying.

  Siski steps toward me. Old instincts die hard; I step back. Yellow eyes shrink in scrutiny.

  I no hurt you, Siski says.

  “I won’t hurt you, either.”

  You lightning bug. No bother.

  “That’s a take.”

  Speak. As I speak.

  “I can’t.”

  Why?

  “There are other voices on the line. It’s complicated.”

  Star Walker.

  “The Ever… yes. You know them?”

  We hear them. In you.

  That’s no good. I clench my fists tight. My whole body, like I’m trying to be as light as I can over the thin ice I walk on with the alien. “I know you can’t understand…”

  I understand, Siski says.

  “How?”

  Siski squints, like she’s trying to think of how to explain. Wolves hunger. Kill. Eat. Wolves obey instinct. I have thought. Her eyes settle on the deer. I have guilt.

  She has fear. I sense it, in her thoughts. Fear of her power. The connection she has to her pack, her prey, her world. Sometimes it’s too much. Most of the time. I came in here being a smart ass, and Siski knows more of my pain than I do.

  I reach out, cautiously. Siski lowers her head and I gently touch the wolf’s scarred snout. “Let me help.”

  Find killer. Give to us.

  I withdraw my hand. “They’ll be punished, I swear.”

  The wolf snorts. By what judge? What jury?

  “Well… things are a little…”

  Complicated? Siski presses her nose to mine. No law in city. No justice. Give wolf killer to Bloodbacks. Or no deal.

  “What trial will they get here? What justice?”

  The wolf almost smiles. Ours.

  I bite my lip. “I can’t hand over a human being with rights for you to simply butcher. You know I can’t.”

  Siski turns up her nose, and retreats back into the dark. No justice, no peace. Go, Star Walker.

  “And what if it was Lamar who attacked someone? What do you expect of me, then? You know my power.”

  You fear your power too much to use.

  Now who’s being clever. “You know my will. I’ll do what’s necessary.”

  Then you judge. You executioner.

  “We can work this out,” I say.

  We find killer. We make Break Pointe safe.

  “I can’t let you hunt other people.”

  This is the wild, Star Walker. Strong survive.

  Siski vanishes into the dark. My guide yaws his head toward the exit, signaling it’s time to go. Damn it. I resist the urge to stay, to be clever, to try and fix it. I follow the wolf out of the cave. Snow crunches under his paws, the same sound as Ma breaking all the light bulbs out in the apart
ment. Are you the light? Or the bulb? I haven’t thought of Ma in a long time. Too busy. Too much work. Too much has happened, burying the past and branches creak like bones in the icy breeze. Birds swirl back into orbit around me. Piller’s voice crackles in my head.

  What happened?

  Dead blackbirds spoil the perfect white on the sidewalk outside the Halfway Hotel. All victims of the cold. The wind chill plummeted past thirty below last night. I know the birds would be out besides, but I feel responsible. It’s a wonder the Halfway Hotel doesn’t just up and fly away with as many wings as it has on its ledges. I don’t feel the cold. Only the pinch of air molecules. The weight of death in my hands. Bird Woman, the wolves call me. Most of the time, the birds annoy me. They follow me everywhere. Pester me in the middle of the night. Distract me from all the things I have to focus on. Still. I kind of love them. Identify with them. I struggle to connect with Abi, with Vi, with the people I’m responsible for but not the birds. We’re locked together, always and everywhere.

  I take the birds to the field where we found Lamar. Snow melts away on a beam of cosmic energy. Earth warms enough for me to scoop up. I remove a feather from each of the dead birds and I bury them together. None of it makes sense to me, but it feels right. Necessary.

  More birds fall like leaves from the wild trees gnarling out of the white waste. An oil slick on an ice cap. Swallows cover me like moss. Pulses of light ripple through me as dozens of birds touch down on my shoulders, as they crawl over my jacket, my heart, as they cocoon me in feathers.

  A skin of snow crumbles away as I open the window. Birds trickle inside the apartment, too cold to be excited at their reprieve. They organize into dense lines along the sill. The back of the couch. All very behaved. For now. They’re too cold to move. Once they warm up, I’ll be wondering where my head was.

  “This is only temporary,” I say.

  I place the feathers of the blackbirds on the mantle with all my pictures. Ma’s wedding ring. Her ashes. There’s no grave. No church. She’s just always here. I thought this was healing. I thought this was facing it, but I’m never here. So much to do. Nothing happening. Is anything really going to change?