He pulled her into a tight embrace. “I promise. I will be completely, totally, and forever out of that life.”
24
Saturday,
December 19
On the Lualaba River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Sleep had become an ephemeral, abstract concept to Wally. Sleep was the thing his body tried to do to pass the time between attacks from Ghost. His exhaustion was so complete that he could nod off almost instantly, but Ghost woke him too frequently for the sleep to do any good. He never got more than an hour or two before she returned.
She’s just a little kid, he reminded himself. Wally wouldn’t let himself be angry. Not with Ghost. Somebody had made her this way. She was just a little girl.
But that was little consolation, when their interaction unfolded the same way every time: Ghost hit him with the knife. He woke up. He tried and failed to catch her. She receded into the jungle.
Over and over and over again. All night long.
When morning finally came, Wally woke to find the sun shining in his eyes. He moaned and rolled over, trying vainly to fend off the headache. But it was the perfect recipe for a migraine: massive sleep deprivation capped off with a burst of sunlight straight into his tired eyes.
Sunlight? Wally sat up. Rays of light streamed through the tatters of his shredded tent.
Ghost, it seemed, was just as frustrated as Wally.
Ellen Allworth’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
Bugsy swam slowly up toward consciousness. The ceiling was familiar. He was at Ellen’s place. New York, thank God. His body felt thick and sluggish. The general sense of illness might have been jet lag or the weird systemic rebellion of having lost too many wasps at once. The sheets and pillow were crisp and cool and deeply comfortable, except that was desperately hungry.
He levered himself up out of bed and stumbled to the living room. The pajama legs were too long, folding up under his feet and trying to trip him. Ellen, alone on the couch, was gently stroking the ruined fedora. Will-o’-Wisp. Nick.
“Hey,” Bugsy said. “You okay?”
Ellen looked up at him, the corners of her mouth turned down. “Sure,” she said. “It’s just… I’m still a little messed up after Paris. I didn’t know Garou, but I had coffee with Burrowing Owl before things got bad. He was a nice guy. He was going to Marseilles after the conference. Now he won’t.”
“Yeah. I mean, you could take him, I guess. If it’s important.”
“I could,” she said. Her voice was tired and thin. “They’re all like that. My Nick. Mom. Aliyah. All of them. I’m always the last chance. The one hope of doing whatever it was that wasn’t done before they had to go.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” Bugsy said.
“Of course I have to.” She held up Nick’s hat, as if it was a counterargument. “I’m one of them myself, right? The queen of holding on after it’s too late.”
How long had it been? he wondered. How many years exactly had the real Nick been gone, and Cameo holding on to the memory of him. Keeping the reminder of his absence fresh every time she put the hat on, pulled him into her body again, talked with him. How many times in that private internal conversation had she told him how much she loved him? How many times had he said it back to her?
He was looking at a wound that was never going to heal, bleeding again. “Hey,” he said gently. “I know this is hard. Seriously. At some point, you’ve got to let him go-”
“No, I don’t. I can’t. I can’t let any of them go, Bugsy, because if I do, then they’re dead. Really dead. Finally dead. Permanently. As long as I can bring them back. Talk to them. Be them…”
As long as you can do that, nothing ever ends, Bugsy thought. As long as you can do that, you’re going to be carrying everything and everyone forever. Your mom. Your boyfriend. My girlfriend. You’re responsible for keeping all of them alive, because they’re already dead. You poor bastard.
“Yeah,” Bugsy said. “Okay.”
On the Congo River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The pit. Again. Michelle is sick of the pit. She is sick of the smell, and the dark, and the bodies.
“Adesina?” she sighs. “Where are you?”
A hand drops onto her shoulder and she jumps. When she turns, no one is there. The pile in the pit shifts. It moves as if possessed.
“Adesina!”
“Miss! Wake up, miss.”
Michelle jerked awake.
“Your friend,” Kengo said. “I’m worried about her.”
She pushed her hair back from her face and sat up in the bunk. “Did she sleep?”
Kengo shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe a little. She just keeps staring into the jungle. And she says things. Is she crazy?”
“You mean more so than usual?” Michelle poured herself a cup of water from the container on the small galley counter. It was warm and brackish, but given how crappy her mouth tasted she figured it could only help. “I’ll go talk to her.”
She went topside. It wasn’t raining, but the humidity was so high it might as well have been. The sky was overcast and there was a preternatural quiet.
Joey was still sitting on the back bench of the boat, huddled in the poncho.
“You should take that off,” Michelle said. “It’s not raining anymore.”
Joey glanced up at her and Michelle was shocked to see how bad she looked.
“I’m cold, Bubbles. Really fucking cold.”
Michelle squatted down and took her hand. It was icy and she wanted to sympathize, but she didn’t have time for Joey to fall apart. She needed her to be Hoodoo Mama.
“You’re going to get sick if you don’t rest,” Michelle said. “At some point we’re going to be walking, and you need to be stronger.”
“Walking through blood?”
“Whatever it takes.”
Joey leaned in closer to Michelle and started stroking her arm.
“I’m cold, Bubbles,” she said again. Her voice was thick with Cajun honey. “I’m so cold. We could warm each other up. You remember, like we did back home. It was cold then, too.”
“It wasn’t cold,” Michelle said, pulling away. “It was in the middle of a hurricane and it was a mistake. I’m not making the same mistake again.”
“You’re a hard-ass, Bubbles,” Joey said sadly. “I always thought you were so nice, so fucking sweet with your blond hair and your green eyes. Not anymore. You’d walk over corpses to do what you needed to, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” Michelle said. “But I don’t want to be walking over yours. Go get some sleep.”
Joey pulled the poncho over her head and then handed it to Michelle. “They’re all so fucking little,” Joey said. “Do all the kids die here?”
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to save one.”
Joey stumbled past her and went inside the cabin.
And as Michelle watched the jungle slip by on the river, it began to rain. She pulled on the poncho and lifted the hood over her head.
Then, over the rain, she could hear something that made her want to cry. It was the sound of Joey and Kengo fucking. Joey was using Kengo to fuck away whatever was preying on her out there in the jungle.
On the Lualaba River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Something had to give. It did, finally, around midday.
Wally guided his boat into a shaded cove along the river when the rain came. The patter of raindrops on his head felt like somebody had taken a jackhammer to his skull. Even the tiniest ripples on the water vibrated the boat enough to make Wally moan in agony. He’d given Jerusha all of their painkillers, so he had to ride out the migraine.
He wondered if he shouldn’t just give himself over to the PPA. Anything had to be better than this.
Wally lay down in the boat. What point was there in going ashore? His tent was useless. He closed his eyes. Sleep claimed him instantly.
Until his leg erupted in searing pain. Wally yelped. He sat up, fast enough to rock the boat.