The lines of paint running into the drains turn red, scarlet trickles of blood filling indents in tarmac, pooling, a spiderweb network of bloodstains that weaves around shattered glass and dislodged masonry to link the bodies, the remains, the limbs together. Then the sound comes in, sudden, fast—there’s always a delay, but it always surprises her, catches her unaware. At first it sounds muted, like she’s been deafened, that fuzziness you get the day after standing near the sound system rigs for far too long. And then it whooshes in, like air filling a vacuum, the mix packed so chaotically, so densely, that it almost knocks her off her feet. Alarms, screams, sobbing, yells—from above, the low drone of engines and the ever-present skittering roll of drums.
In front of her stand Diane and Alan, oblivious to it all, even the thick, black, acrid smoke that is pouring from the broken shell of the overturned police van that lies just a few feet to their left, oblivious as the smoke spirals around them, engulfs them. They seem only half there to Mary, like they’ve been badly cut out from one old newspaper photo and stuck, with a child’s blissful lack of care for perspective and lighting, onto another one, ripped from a story about a lost cat and pasted into a story about some terrible event in some savage, distant country, their pale faces lit by a sun she can’t see.
She gazes past them, back toward the freshly hollowed-out shell of the wall-like 5102 building as it leaks more smoke and spits flames at the darkening sky, lost figures stumbling about in the thick haze of dust and airborne debris.
And then, from near her feet, voices. Faint, distorted, panicked.
move her we’ve got to move her get her out of the road we
no no moving her is worst thing we can do jesus just hold this here no here hold that
here christ what was that we need an ambulance she needs a fucking ambulance
they won’t let any in they won’t let them in just don’t let go
they’ve got to they’ve got to got to fucking let them in now
get that fucking mask off her jesus
“He’s here,” Mary tells Diane and Alan, barely more than a whisper.
“Where? Where is he?”
“Diane, calm down—”
Mary crouches in the street, brings her face almost eye to eye with the boy. It’s definitely him from the picture, she can be sure of it now, and she realizes his expression isn’t blank, it’s intense concentration. He’s on his knees, his arms disappearing into a mess of red that Mary can’t bring herself to look at directly, she’s just aware there’s a body there, motionless, a person, parts that should be there gone, face covered by a paint-spattered gas mask. Next to the boy kneels a girl, sobbing, her clothes soaked in crimson.
“He’s here,” Mary repeats, louder. “Right here. Kneeling on the ground.”
“I’ve had enough—”
“Shut up!” Diane drops to the ground, crouches next to Mary. Her hand lightly strokes the tarmac, feeling its way, as if she’s trying to read some message encoded in the compacted black gravel, but from Mary’s view it looks like she’s rooting around in the corpse’s abdomen. She feels sick.
She stands again, focuses. She pauses time.
Or, more accurately, she pauses one of the times. Then time. The time from that night. Smoke stops swirling, becomes sculpture, strangely flat, two-dimensional. Paper fragments, burnt and fluttering from the sky, suddenly hover in the air, still. Around her, the bodies that have somehow remained upright become statuesque, broken and disfigured.
Diane is still crouched in the road, unaware of how close she sits to her frozen son.
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s trying to help people. People are hurt, and he’s trying to help them. To deal with their wounds.” She feels sick again.
“Oh, c’mon now.” Alan has heard enough. “We already told you he was studying to be a doctor, you’re just using—”
“Shush!” Diane holds her palm up at her husband, silencing him. “Is he… is he alone?”
“There’s a girl with him. About his age. Blond hair, pretty.” She’s lying now, slightly. She can’t see the girl’s face; it’s blurred. They sometimes are. Give them what they want.
“It’s Sarah!” Diane is suddenly on her feet, clutching Alan’s arm. “It must be Sarah!”
“Di—”
“Can you… can you tell us anything else? Can you describe him? What… what’s he wearing?” The pleading eyes. Mary has seen them on every parent that’s passed through the shop.
She looks down at the three figures, flinches at the perfectly spherical blood drops suspended in the air around the boy’s bruised face, inspects his clothes—clearly unchanged for days, ripped and worn, splattered in blood and vomit and shit.
“He’s wearing a black coat, large hood with a fur collar. It’s nice. Looks warm.”
“Yes…”
“And he’s got a bag… a bag with him. It’s full of bandages, medical stuff. He’s using it now, to help someone.”
“What color is it?”
The bag is so soaked in blood she can’t make it out at first.
“Green… and brown. Patterned. Camouflage. Yeah, it’s camouflage-patterned.”
“Ian…” Teardrops roll slowly down Diane’s cheeks, and Mary finds herself surprised by how the fluid motion contrasts with the freeze-framed world around her. The man, however, isn’t moving at all, as though he’s become infected, become part of the then world, frozen.
“Alan… it’s him. That’s his bag. You bought it for him… he insisted on camouflage… you wanted to get him a leather one but…”
The man still doesn’t move, the blood drained from his already pale face.
Enough. Mary has had enough. Time to end this.
She unfreezes then time.
There’s a roar behind her, and she turns to look. Clouds of smoke roll toward them from the direction of the gates, but it’s white this time, not black, and it stings the eyes and faces of those running to escape from it. Some of them wear gas masks like the corpse on the floor, to protect them from just this, but still they run out of the smoke.
Mary knows what they run from—she can hear it: the shouts, the thunder of hoofs on concrete—she’s seen it before, too many times, she doesn’t need to see it again. She takes her glasses off.
“It happened here,” she says.
“What?” The man finally speaks. “What happened?”
Tyrone yawns, stretches his arms out to his sides.
“C’mon, girl, this is long. Wind it up.”
“What, she don’t usually take this long, then?” Ozone has never seen Mary do her thing before, Tyrone realizes.
“Nah, she usually like—oh, here we go. Done.”
From their respectable distance they watch the man crumble, fold in half. The woman tries to catch him, supports him for a painful second, but she can’t hold him, and he’s down on his hands and knees in the paint-stained road.
“Fuck, man. What she say to them?”
“Well, if you believe any of this shit,” Tyrone says, yawning, “then she just showed them where their son died.”
2. BEFORE
“This your first time?”
The guy’s eyes seem too close together.
“In America? Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
He nods, seemingly at the space itself. Pale fluorescent light falling through conditioned air. Government-issue beige walls.
“Ah. So definitely your first time in here, then.”
“Yeah.”
Pause.
“Not me.”
Rush sighs, hopefully to himself. He glances at the guy. Shaved head coming back through as blond stubble, orange tan sitting uncomfortably against the beige. Forehead stacked with lines from too much sun, time, or both. Eyes definitely too close together.