He stares at Koba’s face.
“One more little touch, maybe,” he says.
Then he sticks the burning end of his smoke stick into Koba’s hurt eye. Koba screams and throws himself back against the cage, but he cannot go far enough to avoid the burning stick.
“I ought to burn out your other eye, too,” Tommy mutters. “But then you’d be no goddamn use to me at all.” Then he stumbles off. He falls, and makes a hard sound when he hits the floor. Koba barely notices, he’s in so much pain.
“Goddamn,” Tommy says, pushing himself up. Koba sees blood on his mouth. “Looks like I need another drink. Heh.”
He wags his finger at Koba.
“I hope you aren’t laughing at me,” he says. “If you are, we’ll have words later, you and me.”
Then he gets up and leaves the room.
Tommy feeds them the next morning. He changes their water. Then Koba doesn’t see Tommy for a long time. He and Milo grow hungry, but the thirst is worse. It takes away his strength. His legs won’t hold him up, and the cage hurts him where his body pulls against it.
Tommy returns. Koba doesn’t know how long it’s been. The lights have been off for days.
Tommy is carrying something. It is not the stick. It is smaller, and fits into Tommy’s hand in a different way. It has a hole in the end, about the size his little finger might fit into. He points it at him, and Koba knows whatever it is will probably hurt, but he is too sick from lack of food and water to care.
Tommy points it at him for a long time, and then he lowers it.
“Screw it,” he finally says. He opens Koba’s cage, and then slowly walks away.
Koba looks at the open cage door, unsure what to do. He wants to go out, find food and water. But he’s scared of Tommy.
Suddenly he hears a loud bang. Then it is very quiet.
Koba can finally stand it no longer, and he leaves the cage.
He finds Tommy on the couch. He is lying slumped in one corner of it. His eyes are open but he doesn’t seem to see Koba. Just like Mother. There is blood everywhere, and the thing is in his hand.
Kobe decides to leave Tommy alone. Even though his eyes are open, he seems to be asleep.
He goes and releases Milo from his cage, and they go to the boxes, desperate for food and water. They find something sweet to drink, and the place where Tommy keeps their food, and they eat and drink as much as they can. Milo vomits, but Koba does not.
Then Koba lies down, and after moment, Milo joins him. After so much time in the cage, it feels so good to stretch out, to move all of his muscles.
He wakes with Milo pulling at him, frantically trying to get him back to his cage, but Koba doesn’t want to go. He takes Milo to see Tommy. Tommy is still sitting in exactly the same position Koba last saw him in.
Tommy sleep, he signs to Milo. Tommy not wake up.
Milo seems unsure, but when Koba goes to the playroom, Milo waits, then follows. They play for most of the day. Koba thinks that Tommy will vanish, the way his mother did, but Tommy is still there when he looks again.
There are places in the house—square places in the walls, covered with cloth. Sometimes light comes from behind them, and sometimes not. Koba decides to look behind the cloth and see what is there.
What he sees is beautiful. He sees trees, and houses, and most of all the blue sky and realizes that through this clear, hard stuff is outside. This reminds him of the door, the door Tommy takes them through when they get in the truck. It’s dark in that place, and it’s dark in the truck, but there must be some way out.
He and Milo go into the dark room with the truck. He can see light coming from under one wall, but he can’t figure out how to get out.
That’s when Milo seems to remember something. He goes to the wall and pushes something. Suddenly there is a loud grinding sound.
Koba jumps at the sound and chitters as the sliver of light gets bigger and bigger until they are looking at outside. He gingerly approaches it. He feels something in him, then gets an idea. What if he and Milo just go into the outside, and keep going? What if there are no more cages, no more tricks, no more beatings or shocks or fire pushed in his eye?
He tries to explain to Milo, but Milo is scared. So they find a safe corner and wait. Soon the outside starts getting dark, and Koba gets a little worried, too. But then he becomes determined.
Next time it is light, he thinks, I will go outside and stay there, whatever Milo does.
So he and Milo go back in the house to sleep.
Koba wakes up with a lot people talking. They are everywhere in the house. Some of them are looking at Tommy. Most of them are looking at Milo and Koba.
“Easy there,” a man says, as Koba sits up.
“Crap, look at him,” someone else says. “Is animal control on the way?”
“They should be here any minute,” the first man says.
Koba can see outside.
Koba go outside, he signs.
“Watch it,” the second man says. “He’s doing something.”
Koba looks past the men. He points at outside.
The first man is now holding a thing like Tommy had pointed at him.
Koba go outside, he says again.
“You know,” one of the people says, “I think he might be trying to say something. You know, like those monkeys the scientists talk to?”
“This one looks like the chimp on that TV show,” Somebody else says, pointing at Milo. “He has that same mark on his face.”
“You can’t tell one of these things from another,” the second man says. “They’re all just dumb animals.”
“Well, I can sure tell these apart,” he says, pointing at Koba’s eye. “There’s no way I’d forget that.”
Koba knows then that the people won’t help him. He knows there is only one way he can go outside.
He bounds forward, over the couch where Tommy will never wake up, through the open door. He reaches the grass, feels it beneath his feet as he runs with every ounce of strength in his body.
They run after him. Koba sees a tree and scrambles up it. It is hard—all those days in the cage cause his muscles to cramp, but it still feels good as he climbs up toward the sky. This time he thinks he might touch it, because there is no cage, and he can keep going up, up, higher until no one can even see him.
Something hits him in the side, hard, and it hurts so much he almost loses his hold. He puts his hand there and finds something sticking out of it.
He looks down, and sees lots of people looking at him. Some of them are pointing. He sees Milo, being led on a leash toward a truck.
Then he turns and begins climbing again, but it’s more difficult now, and everything is going strange. His hands and feet seem very distant, not connected to him anymore. His heartbeat is like a little fly buzzing in his chest. The sky above seems to be moving around the tree.
The last thing Koba is aware of is falling. He feels as if he is in the sky.
13
David didn’t turn, as the voice had directed. He ran like hell. It wasn’t a strategy or the result of a conscious decision. It was just what he did.
This time he heard the high-pitched whine of a silenced gun firing sas he sprinted back toward Church Street, with nothing but open ground around him. Then he heard it again. He didn’t hear the third shot because he was too busy being hit by it. White heat blazed through his back and the ribs on his right side, and his lungs suddenly felt hot, as if he’d been running all day.