Kodie tried getting on their level. She put her hands on her knees and bent forward, curled the hair of the long side around her ear. “Why are we too late?”
There was a beat of pause, then the children boomed, “they leap from high places with smiles on their faces!” as if such was self-evident. Their brows furrowed, their cheeks flushed. I thought I heard a guttural roil in their throats. If their ears could’ve flattened, they would have. In nature, you know when you’re not wanted.
I actually felt my eyes dilate with fear. I don’t know how Kodie was being so cool. The agitation in the air, their fear transforming into animosity, was palpable. My mind did the dirty math: twelve little kids, two late teens. They could take us. Yes they could, especially if the not-so-little boy next to me turned his head, clutched my calf, leaned forward and bit into my leg. And then if another one were to dash behind to shut the door… a death room. No one would hear us scream.
But it wasn’t their number that bothered me. Not quantity, but quality. Their being was one of menace and strength, their might together exponentially greater than the mere sum of them.
I took a step back, away from the potential biter and into the doorframe. Just in case.
Kodie, hands on knees, ignored their awful chant and waited for Rebecca to answer. She possessed the patience of the sole schoolmarm, unflappable and resolute. “We know it’s scary, what’s happening. But if we all calm down and work together, it won’t be so scary.”
Rebecca looked at Kodie like an adult does a politician smiling at you with his hand out, like, Okay, I’ll play along, I like you, you like me, yes yes, you’ll change things. Rebecca’s maybe six years old, and this is the look she gives. “Tell me, Rebecca, why do you say we’re too late? We’ve found you. It isn’t too late.”
The room became so still it stiffened. The air itself attained a new property, went from gas to a semisolid, encasing us.
“But it is,” said Rebecca. Her normal little girl’s voice now. A voice that admitted that she was scared.
“No, Rebecca, it isn’t. We can help.”
“It is,” she whined and stamped her Mary Janed foot once on the wood floor. She looked down at the floor at her feet like she was sorry. “It is.”
The little boy right below me shot a glance inside my open shirt, fixed on the gun, then snapped to my face.
Then Rebecca said, “Too late for you.”
Behind me, Johnny’s voice. “Hey, Kev.”
Surprised, not hearing him walking through the house, I spun around.
“It’s only me, brother. No other,” Johnny said in that dreamy voice.
“Johnny! Oh, thank God!” Just as I stepped toward him, several small hands pushed me into Johnny. I tripped over his leg into the hall and fell hard. The gun clattered to the wood floor and spun. The door slammed closed. I scrambled up.
Johnny now held Martin’s gun flat in his palms and regarded it like it were a nonfunctional object. “What are you doing here?”[7] His eyes wide as saucers.
“J, careful with that. Give it to me.”
He took a step back and turned the gun away from me, hunching a shoulder like he would after dinner shielding me from his dessert. “Hold on,” he said.
I stood up and looked cross at him. “Johnny, give it back to me now. I mean it. If you don’t, when we find Martin I’m going to tell him.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
Through the door, “—Rebecca? What’s wrong?” Kodie’s concerned voice.
“My head hurts,” I heard Rebecca whine.
The knob wouldn’t turn. “Kodie, unlock the door.”
“Rebecca? Boys and girls, can you help me? Rebecca’s not feeling well.”
Johnny. “You are too lying.”
“C’mon. Give it to me.”
“No.”
“I’m your big brother and I’m telling you give it to me.”
“—Kevin?” Kodie’s voice from right behind the door. I could see the shadow of her boots in the inch beneath it.
“You okay? What’s going on?”
“Kevin. Hurry.”
“What? What is it? Can you not unlock the door? Johnny’s out here in the hall and he’s got my gun and he won’t give it back.”
“Kevin. I need you.” Kodie’s voice shook now. “The door won’t open,” she whispered. The knob toggled back and forth in slow, halting turns. I visualized her back to the door and her turning the knob awkwardly behind her. No sudden moves. If she faced the door and frantically turned and tugged, they’d pounce like vipers.
I tried it again. It wouldn’t move. I laid a half-assed shoulder into it. Nothing.
The children muttered together, in unison, low-toned words I couldn’t make out.
“Kevin…?” Kodie asked with a suggestion of mounting panic. “Jesus, Kevin, help me. Rebecca’s… I don’t know. She’s… oh, now they’re all holding their heads…”
Then I see Johnny holding the gun by the handle, finger on the trigger. He’s examining it, rubbing the barrel with a finger. He doesn’t have it pointed at me. He’s transfixed, caressing it, lost in its potential.
I take two quick steps to him, grab his wrist holding the gun, and point it away.
“Ow…” he says. I twist his arm. “Ow, ow, ow. Okay.”
“Take your finger off.”
As soon as he removed it, I yanked it from him, flipped the safety back on and shoved it in the holster. Then in my rage I backhanded him across the face and he fell into the wall. He whimpered as I connected with his cheek. He put his palm there.
“You goddamn listen to me, Johnny. Enough of this shit. Got it?” I tried to mask the fear in my voice with anger but couldn’t get the tremble out of it.
He slid his hand from his face, leaving a rake of red marks, and smirked. “Got it. Dick.”
My open hand flew out and popped him again. This time he cried out and it echoed loud in the small hallway. “No. That’s not the answer I need from you. Got it, I said.” My hand stinging, my stance wide, exhaling in nostril flares.
I just found him and the first thing I do is hit him. Twice.
Slumped against the wall with a tear line etching his face, he nodded with contrition. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, head bent between parted knees, his hands clasped behind his neck.
From right behind the door, Kodie screamed.
“Get away from the door!” I bellowed.
I considered using the gun on the door but dismissed that idea as too dangerous. With fear came fight; with that, anger and strength. The door gave to my leg and foot, the jam splintering.
The advancing children stopped midstride. They’d been coming for Kodie, all but Rebecca who lay on the floor on her back with her arms crossed on her chest and her eyes closed. They looked ready for me to scold them. Then their myriad eyes set on mine, flat and unchanging, eyes of one entity, an enormous insect with dripping tips of poison on a lancing tail hidden behind its bulk.
I glanced past them at Rebecca and saw her belly swell and recede. Kodie quickly stepped beside me and seized my arm. I remember feeling her nails pressing into my skin, my heart beating there in the little grooves she made.
The door hung open and swayed a bit on its hinges as the doors of older houses do, the wind moving through the house.
“You okay?” I asked Kodie as we both tried to win the staring contest with the roomful of children. She nodded in my peripheral vision, gripped my arm that much tighter. Then, like spooked deer at the hissed signal they give, the children flew into motion. Around us they bolted, ran off like water down a sloped plane and laughing in the oblivious tones of recess. They thundered through the house, the floor shimmying on its piers and beams, and they were gone.
7
I didn’t know what I was doing there, let alone what Kevin was doing. I have no memory of what happened the morning of. Seeing Kevin while holding my dad’s glock in Rebecca’s hallway is my first new-world memory. The sudden clarity, brightness, loudness of things stunned me. It was as if a thick wad of cotton had been extracted from my mind.