Smoketown

by Tenea D. Johnson

  “Please give this to Dr. Eugenio Oliveira when he arrives.”

  She blinked and stared at him, realization now intensifying her gaze.

  “Mr. McClaren?”

  With a small smile, Rory turned away from her and toward the exit. The front door slid noiselessly open and he took a hesitant step out into the day. Even before the noise, he noticed the wind blowing gently across his face. It carried a smell with it. It was the first smell in years that he couldn’t identify simply because he had not created it.

  Rory breathed deep as he scanned the street—no one within twenty-five meters of him, the sunlight warming him. He moved quickly lest something go wrong. That first step felt as good as anything he could remember, as if the world had been born in that moment and not him back into it. Around him he heard the sound of people but could not see them. Distant voices melded together, creating a soft roar. Rory walked away from the roar and toward his old street.

  On the corner where his family’s house stood, a dozen Starlings dressed in their emblematic red boots talked and laughed. Luckily Rory had seen them first and been able to skirt the group without being noticed. After the last few blocks, he’d had a lot of practice avoiding direct contact with anyone. From the safety of the darkened doorways birds and from behind newsstands, Rory had watched people running from and the small fires that had broken out. He had overheard the arguments about whether stragglers would be locked in the city, saw the fights erupt over the smallest trespass, the slightest delays, had even witnessed a different group of Starlings toss a Molotov cocktail into a battalion trans without a single look back. For that reason, as much as any other, he gave the Starlings on the corner a wide berth as Rory made his way to the front door of the old family home.

  He hadn’t known he would come straight here, but as he found himself following the path home, it came as no surprise. It was the first time he’d had enough clearance to make it from The Spires to McClaren Street. He stopped at the stoop of their old building, afraid to look up and somehow see his nieces standing there, or his mother, or worse yet his sister Katherine. How he had loved Katherine.

  See there, Rory thought, still outside and already it all starts to fall out of its hiding place. He briefly considered turning and continuing down the street, making a nice loop and then back to the penthouse. The thought in and of itself was irritating; he didn’t have the strength to pretend that was possible. He had finally come home and fear would not make him leave.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he climbed the stairs and put his right hand on the palmlock. With his left he placed the old key in the deadbolt and turned. As Rory pushed the door open, it creaked on old hinges, not rusted, but not quite used to moving either. His entrance kicked up a thin layer of dust. He sneezed and stepped into the marble foyer. He felt an instant pang when he saw the rosette pattern in the floor. Rory had dreamed of it, had it incorporated into the drapery of his bedroom without realizing why. Standing here it seemed impossible that he could forget where the pattern came from. The floor loomed up at him and he had to steady himself against the wall.

  Rory recovered and pushed off the wall, walked slowly into the family room beyond the foyer. Dust coated the back of his throat. Even to him, his footsteps sounded too loud in the space.

  His mother’s English chestnut shelves still lined the walls, each one floating independently and neatly stacked, allowing just enough room to accommodate the largest book on the shelf and no more. The old sofa still sat across from the shelves. The arm of the overstuffed sofa’s green had faded to a lime color Rory felt certain she would despise. He looked over at the wall opposite and saw the cause of the faded couch. A folding wooden shade stood partly open; apparently it had been open for years. The area of hardwood from the window to the sofa had also faded from sunlight. Perhaps it had been open from the beginning. Maybe Katherine had looked out this window and down on to the street as she talked to him on the handheld that day.

  Under his breath, he cursed the company that had closed the house up, then remembered he had given instructions to go only where the work required—still a simple matter of closing a shade.

  Rory walked to the window, intending to close it himself, but it seemed pointless now; the damage had already been done. He stopped short and stepped over to the bookcase. On the far corner of the second shelf a small wooden frame caught his eye. The frame held a picture of the girls poring over the huge paper dictionary his mother had kept in the library. He held the photo up to his face, hand shaking. Energy flooded back into him and, almost impossibly, it felt as good as he had imagined it would feel. There had to be more photos upstairs. Rory turned and hurried in that direction.

  His hand pushed dust down the banister as he grabbed it and pulled himself upstairs. The photos would be in his mother’s bedroom on the maid’s floor. She had always called it such though only she lived on that floor. He could hear her voice now, “I like to feel nestled, Ruairí.” The bright blue of her door had not faded. He grabbed the knob and turned, half expecting to hear her call from her bathroom.

  The door opened to blackness and a musty odor that hit Rory like a slap: the dank smell of mold and a coppery something he couldn’t quite place. Rory pulled out the flashlight he’d brought and pointed it in the room. The strong mix of smells burned in the back of his throat and within seconds, the beginnings of a headache gathered behind his temples. The dark swam in front of his eyes. Roy blinked to clear his head, and drew back the hand that held the flashlight to cover his nose and mouth.

  Rory knew instinctively that something lived in the dark. He stood in the hallway trying to decide if he wanted to meet it. Was that a tremor there at his feet? He thought he felt something move on the floorboards deep in the room and swung his flashlight towards it, cane held tightly as a baton in his other hand. A small rat emerged from his mother’s bathroom and shot past him into the hallway. Rory grunted and jumped out of the way just in time to feel its tail smack his ankle. It took a few seconds for his heartbeat to slow down and in that time a second rat a bit slower and larger than the first bounded past him, out the door. This one was followed by a single bee that flew straight into Rory’s face. He swatted it away and shone his flashlight into the darkness of the room.

  The beam swept over a cloud of heavy mist on the other side of the cavernous room, but Rory didn’t see any more rats. He swung the beam up towards the ceiling searching for bats, and across the floorboards again looking for rolling or scorpion beetles. The air grew prickly. Small hairs on his forearms rose up. His hearing aids emitted a small sound like feedback and Rory stopped cold where he stood. Breath left him. His senses locked in and stilled. He swung the flashlight towards the cloud of mist.

  The swarm of bees was closer, no more than a couple of meters from him. Each bee looked indistinguishable from the next, a cloud bearing down on him. Rory stepped back from the door and slammed it hard on its hinge. He stood on the other side breathing heavily. When he felt a bit steadier, he hurried down the rickety flight of stairs and tried to figure out what to do next. He still wanted those photos.

  Rory checked his satchel and moved toward the kitchen. He turned his hearing aids up to their highest level and almost deafened himself when he took a deep breath. Sonofabitch. He turned the volume back down, but not before registering a buzz from somewhere in the next room. He turned in time to see the first half-dozen bees.

  Moving as quickly as the cane would allow him he was down the stairs and hallway. The buzzing grew louder and afraid to turn around Rory caught a reflection in a patch of clean on a dirty window. The buzzing cloud looked larger than it had just a moment ago. For all that his ears left him wanting, his eyes were as sharp as they’d been thirty years ago when he’d had them permanently corrected. And he could definitely see clearly enough to know that he didn’t want to take another look. Rory grabbed the banister at the landing, and shot-put himself around it and the corner.

  As he did, his foot caught on t
he landing and sent him sprawling. His elbow bashed into the glass in the front door, breaking a hole as big as his head. He’d take note of the gash later. For now he tried to pull his elbow out of the broken door, while causing as little pain as possible. The first bees were on him. He felt stings on the back of his head and an excruciating pain in his left eye. Rory moved, righting himself quickly and pushing himself through the door and outside.

  His mind raced ahead of him, trying to come up with a viable escape route. He turned right, not quite sure of why. His security alert was as good as dead with no one on the other end, but he tried it anyway. He could feel the adrenaline pumping into his system, lubricating his creaky joints. His cane stabbed into the pavement sure as a rudder pushing him forward and past the group of Starlings he’d passed earlier. They looked at him quizzically at first and then behind him. Then they moved too. A couple of the small boys almost knocked him over in their haste. They scampered directionless. Rory had a plan.

  The bees followed the group of Starlings and didn’t seem to take much notice when he paused to catch his breath under a construction awning. Rory took this opportunity and slipped away, down a set of stairs to the subdoor of 28 McClaren Street, the family guesthouse. He found the right key and put his palm up to the lock. On his second try, he unlocked it, falling against the other side in relief.

  A sudden debilitating round of coughing overtook him. He doubled over, his weight pressed against the head of his cane, focused on nothing but breathing for long, wheezing moments. Rory regained enough strength to straighten, though his heart still beat madly in his chest. Boxes filled the small storage room. Rory immediately began to check for openings in the room, turning up his hearing aid to listen for any telltale buzzing.

  A scream rang out, momentarily deafening him. Rory lowered the volume of his hearing aid and hurried back to the door, cracking it open a few centimeters. He looked over the top stair and out onto the street. The Starlings seemed to have split up. The bees attacked a group of five. The group was left outside on the corner, a tall boy whirling around trying to swat away bees with his duster, three others did the same and there was a small figure on the ground. That one seemed to be unable to get up, whether from fear or injury Rory couldn’t tell, but a small cloud of bees buzzed between Rory and the Starlings outside.

  “Here!” he yelled. “Over here!”

  He thought he saw the kid on the ground turn towards his voice. A flash of Katherine in the way she lay there. The others bolted towards him, rushing past him and into the room. With a curse, Rory walked outside. He moved as quickly as he could to the figure on the ground. The sound of buzzing had engulfed Rory’s hearing aids. Already his vision was starting to narrow as the bee sting to his eye began to swell.

  He reached the figure—a girl, he thought—and half-pulled, half-carried her to the top of the stairs. Bees stung his face, his neck, hands, and through his clothes. Within a few seconds Rory couldn’t feel the stingers anymore and his world collapsed with his vision: there was the door to reach and nothing else.

  He stumbled and nearly dropped her, and bashed his knee into the sharp edge of the stair instead. He opened his mouth to curse and bees choked him. He sputtered and stumbled again. The tall boy met them halfway up and helped get them inside. Rory handed the girl over to him and locked the door behind them. Only when he felt the lock hiss into place and the whisper of the seal engaging did Rory realize what he had done. He’d locked the door himself, and now he was trapped in this room full of people. The wheezing came back in small, panicked bursts.

  The Starling who’d been on the ground kept screaming, making the dark blacker, the room hotter. A dozen bees buzzed around the room and the tall boy went about the business of swatting them down with his duster and immense hands.

  Rory lit his flashlight, searching for a touchpad for the overhead lights. The kid stopped yelling, began to whimper. Rory thought perhaps it had been fear more than pain.

  The sound of buzzing in the room began to fade as more bees were smashed against the floor and walls. Rory slid down the wall. He couldn’t feel it; his back had gone numb same as everywhere else, but when he leaned back something stopped him from falling flat. His face burned. Besides the heat, it felt tight, ready to burst. The tall boy approached him and by the look on the kid’s face, Rory was glad he didn’t have to see what he looked like. Shock and mild disgust etched the tall boy’s expression.

  Rory’d planned on tasting a bit of freedom after all these years and now here he lay in a den of miscreants full of barbs and venom, his hearing aids making the sound of his anxious breathing as inescapable as the present situation.

  The tall boy leaned down, his elbows on his knees, squinting into Rory’s face, a low whistle escaped his lips.

  “You’re not gonna die, are you, old man?” he asked.

  Even in his increasing stupor, Rory found the presence of mind to give the kid the finger. That should translate across the ages.

  

  Rory woke to an odd muffled sensation on his mouth. When he opened his eyes, the tall boy leaned over him pulling stingers out of his lips with his fingers.

  “Don’t move,” the tall boy said, concentration knitting his eyebrows.

  Rory couldn’t but even if he could, he doubted he would. It had been too long since someone had touched him so intimately, with actual fingers and flesh—still Rory could barely feel it. His body felt like a hole he’d fallen into, everything seemed to be at a great distance. He could hardly feel anything at all and what he did feel was tight and hot. The soldier in him knew the stingers should be swept with a card, not plucked, but that would mean no touching, and in the back of his mind he knew it wouldn’t last, this touching, so he closed his eyes again and tried to focus every bit of awareness on it, to wake up his comatose flesh and feel the preciousness.

  It was nearly impossible. He felt a wreck. He pulled breath in on a rope of strength slipping from his grasp.

  “Waste of time,” a voice said. Rory wasn’t sure it was wrong.

  “Quiet,” someone else said.

  Rory opened his eyes to see who that was.

  The kid that had been lying on the ground now stood a few meters from him. It was a girl, maybe twelve, he now saw, short and brown-skinned with disturbingly clear blue eyes that even he could see through the tunnel that his vision had become.

  “He’ll hear you,” the small, blue-eyed girl said.

  “Oh, excuse me, missus.” An older girl walked into Rory’s sight line and looked right at him. “Waste of time,” she repeated, louder and slower this time.

  Under other circumstances he might have considered her attractive. He could see himself contracting her for a virtu or two, a low-rung sex scan most likely. And in truth she’d only expressed how most of his virtuosos felt about him; still he decided she’d be best suited with disappointment and discomfort for long periods of time.

  The small one threw a look her way.

  “I’m sure that—” She looked at Rory expectantly. The tall boy stopped pulling at Rory’s lips for a moment.

  “Rory,” he offered. He tried to remember the last time he’d introduced himself to anyone. Even before the Crumble people had known him on sight, as they did all McClarens. It was one of the reasons he’d joined the service, and started dying his hair black.

  “You think I care ‘cause he’s got a name?” the shitty, pretty girl said.

  “No, I wouldn’t think you’re quite capable of that,” the small girl answered.

  The tall boy stopped plucking at Rory’s lips again, and turned to the girl nearest the door.

  “Are they still out there?” he asked, resuming his task.

  Rory heard the door crack open.

  “Can’t see. Can’t tell,” she responded.

  “You might actually have to look outside. Two millimeters of light showing. Of course you can’t tell,” the small girl said.

  “You think I’m going out there to—
”

  “Shhh!” Rory said. Surprised into silence the Starlings turned his way, but he only needed a second.

  Rory briefly maxed out the volume on his aids.

  “I don’t hear them,” he said.

  “Oh well, let’s just be on our way then. Pincushion coffin dodger’s given the all clear,” the rude girl said.

  “Shut up,” the small girl said. “If you don’t like how this chattering does things, you should have stayed with Deed’s group then. You’re perfect for each other, pyros and psychos.”

  The rude girl hunched her shoulders and threw a sour expression at the floor, but she didn’t speak.

  The small girl walked over to the door and waved the timid one away. With a glance Rory’s way she slowly opened the door and looked into the open space. After a few seconds, she stuck her head out, and more of her slowly disappeared outside. She closed the door with a soft click. The tall boy rose and hovered near the door. Just as he was about to follow her out, she reentered.

  “We’re clear,” she said. “At least down to Mabach.”

  She walked over and helped Rory to his feet. The group crept out of the room. The tall boy took the lead, using his long limbs to wrap around the construction awning and peek out on the street’s blind side. Flotsam from the evacuation blew in the breeze, but not much else stirred—no clouds of bees, not even an errant few. He motioned for the others to join him on the landing, and the ramshackle group inched their way back out on the street. Rory stood balanced between the small girl and the tall boy.

  Pain broke through Rory’s haze and he groaned quietly. It took an effort to lift his head and gaze down the street. He turned his head back to his family’s home and caught the rude girl looking at him. The girl’s face actually went a bit soft with concern.