* * * * *
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
Revelations
* * * * *
THE team disbands as the light begins to fail. But she lingers in the pit, gently brushing the dirt from the ribcage of a skeleton she’s just uncovered in the last hour, lost in her work. The distant hum of an airplane breaks her concentration, and she looks up into the sky—easy to see the twin-engine turboprop catching sunlight on its descent.
She climbs out of the pit and walks over to the showers. Pulls the curtain. Strips out of her boots, elbow-length rubber gloves, her clothes, and stands under the heavy spray of water, letting it pound away the reek of decomp.
In fresh, clean clothes, she starts across the field.
The airplane is parked in the distance, the cabin door beginning to open.
She breaks into a run.
The old man comes down the stairs of the plane already smiling, must have seen her as they taxied up. Drops his bag as she runs into his arms, and they embrace for the first time in six months on the broken pavement of the runway.
“My angel,” he whispers. “My angel.”
When they come apart, she stares up at him, thinking, God, was his hair this white last Christmas? But he isn’t looking at her. He’s staring across the field, an intensity coalescing in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Daddy?”
He can barely speak, eyes shimmering with tears, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“This is the place.”
They cross the field, moving toward the pit.
“They pulled the trucks up to here,” he says. “A half dozen tractor trailers. There were tents set up over there,” he points, “right about where yours are. They told us there was hot food and beds waiting.” He stops. “Is that smell. . .?”
“Yeah.”
“Right about this time of day, too. Dusk. A beautiful sunset.” He continues walking, the stench growing worse with every step, until they stand at the edge of the grave.
She watches his face. He’s somewhere else—nineteen years in the past.
“They lined us up right here,” he says. “They’d already dug the grave.”
“How many people do you think?”
“Maybe two hundred of us.” He closes his eyes, and she wonders what he sees, what he hears.
“Do you remember where you stood?”
He shakes his head. “I just remember the sounds and what the sky looked like, staring up at it through the bodies that had fallen on top of me.”
“Did they use chainsaws?”
He looks down at her, startled by the question.
“Yeah. How did you—”
“We were curious about how some of the bones had been bisected.”
The man eases himself down into the grass and she sits beside him.
“You’ve been down in the grave?” he asks.
“I worked in it all day. That’s what I do, Daddy.”
He chuckles. “You know I’m proud to death of you, angel, but Jesus do you have a fucked-up job.”
She leans her head against his shoulder, laces her fingers through his, twiddling the platinum band he now wears on the nub of his left ring finger.
The team builds a bonfire after supper.
Someone strums a guitar.
Someone rolls a joint.
A bottle makes the rounds.
She sits between the old man and Sam, the Australian team leader, feeling contemplative off two swigs of whiskey and staring into the flames. The cold of the night a wonderful contrast to the eddies of heat sliding up her bare legs.
Usually, those thirty days in hell are as unreachable as if they had happened to another family. But sometimes, like tonight, she feels plugged in to the raw emotion of it all, a closed circuit, and if she doesn’t keep it at arm’s length, it still has the power to break her.
Her father is a little drunk, Sam more so, and she tunes back in to their conversation as Sam loosens his tie and says, “. . .learning more about the Great Auroral Storm.”
“Yeah, I’ve read some wild theories,” her father says.
“You talking about mine?”
“Entirely possible. You really believe these auroras contributed to the epic massacres and extinctions in history?”
“I think there’s some compelling solar abnormality data on that. But something of the magnitude that happened here? Keep in mind recorded human history is just the blink of an eye since life crawled out of the oceans. This was a hundred-thousand-year occurrence. Maybe a five-hundred. Natural selection at its darkest.”
“So who got selected?” her father asks. “Who won? Us?”
Sam laughs. “No.”
“The affected?”
“Most of them selected themselves out when they committed mass suicide.”
“Then who?”
“Your son,” Sam says.
“Excuse me?”
“People like Cole. Those who witnessed that terrible light show on October Fourth, and either didn’t kill, or did, and resisted the crushing guilt. That’s who won.”
“I have a close friend back home in Belgium in the humanities department where I teach. A priest. He thinks the aurora was just God testing us.”
“Those who saw the aurora, or those who ran?”
“Both, Sam.”
“Well, it all comes down to purification in the end, right?”
“You say it like that’s a good thing.”
“On a human level, no, but in terms of our DNA, it’s a different ball game. Remember, the barbarians finally took Rome. That was horrible, but Rome had become a corrupt, ineffectual, soft culture. Genetically speaking, it was a positive thing.”
“Or,” the old man says, “maybe we just need to kill each other. Maybe that’s our perfect state of being.”
Sam pauses to have a smoke, and when he finally exhales, says, “It surprises me that you would want to see this place again.”
“Why?”
“Because of what you saw and experienced here.”
“You should be examining my bones in that hole,” the old man says.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“This was an awful place, no question, but a miracle happened here. I never want to forget that.”
She’s buzzed and getting tired. Stretches her bare feet toward the fire, lays her head in her father’s lap. Soon he’s running his fingers through her hair, still debating with Sam. She’s almost asleep when something vibrates against the back of her head.
“Excuse me, Sam,” her father says.
The old man reaches into his pocket and retrieves his mobile phone, answers, “I forgot, didn’t I? . . . I’m sorry. . . . Yes, here safe and sound, sitting by a fire. . . . Difficult but good. . . . Yes, I’m glad I came. . . . . . . That’s still the plan. We’ll meet you both in Calgary tomorrow evening. . . . . . . Oh, I know. It’ll be so good to all be together again. . . . Yes, she’s right here, but she’s sleeping. . . . Okay, I’ll tell her. . . . No, I won’t forget. I’ll do it as soon as we get off. . . . Goodnight, darling.”
The old man slides his phone back into his pocket.
She’s almost asleep now, in that cushioned bliss between consciousness and all that lies beneath. Feels her father’s hand on her shoulder, and his breath, still after all these years, familiar against her ear.
“Naomi,” he whispers, “your mother sends her love.”
* * * * *
Read on for an interview with Blake Crouch and excerpts from his four novels, Desert Places, Locked Doors, Abandon, and Snowbound…
* * * * *
Interview with Blake Crouch by Hank Wagner
Originally Published in Crimespree, July 2009