Her growl woke us.
My flashlight had fallen over. A white spot on the bed. Kodie lifted her head from my lap and I sat up from the headboard. Violet filled the skyward house holes. I had fallen asleep with my palm on Maggie, and now she bristled. “What?” I whispered to Maggie. The dog reflexively turned her head to look at me and then right back to the door to the hall. Morning brewed along the horizon, but the house was still dim, the wet air making it feel more like a cave we’d bivouacked in.
I grabbed the flashlight and aimed the beam at the door. The light caught the swirling mist in the air. Maggie stood up in the bed and perked her ears.
“Come on, let’s go look,” I said.
Kodie’s voice creaked. “There’s too many, Kevin. You know that.” I spoke to her silhouette against the purple veined with tree branches. I couldn’t see her eyes. Her head moved up and down. “Okay,” she said, her throat halting and mucosal. “Okay.”
I stood from the bed and took her hand. “C’mon, Maggie.” Maggie padded in front of us.
We went down the hall a few steps, Kodie stooped and limping, clutching the knife. A stout breeze funneled through it, and in it Maggie found something. She barked and bolted. Our flashlights tried to find her but she was gone and outside before we knew it.
Then I heard it, sounding faraway.
Help.
A voice. Not far. Just outside.
Kevin, help me…
Bass’s muffled, pained voice.
Maggie’s bark said something’s treed. Maybe Bass was up in that nest thing I saw. It’s all my mind would consider, Bass hanging in some sort of cocoon.
“Bastian!” I yelled. We started to run. The rocks on the floor troubled us, our ankles straining, the flashlights shooting all over the house walls, the holes, the ceiling.
I make a struggling sound and Kodie, finding herself ahead of me a few steps, pauses to look back over her shoulder at me.
My beam finds the boy’s face looming right behind her.
His face in the bright light has a ghastly pallor and red-rimmed eyes.
I try to keep my light on him. My throat freezes but my jaw starts to move and when Kodie asks what is it, I am finally able to yell out at her, “A boy! There’s a boy! Right there!”
She turns. Her light finds him. Adds to my light. Kodie screams. He’s an arm’s length from her. She falls, drops her knife, starts to scramble backward over the stones. Her light fell off him, but mine’s still on him and his face does something.
It moves, it blurs. A wave flashes through it, under his skin, muscle and bone.
That’s when I feel small cold hands on my ankles. I’m yanked hard backwards with monstrous strength, falling on my front, bashing my face onto the stones covering the floor.
I fade, hearing Kodie. At first, though there was heady fear in it, the voice of the teacher she wanted to be said to them, “Now boys and girls, let’s all calm down. Let’s each take a turn, tell each other what we’re feeling, okay?” They responded with shuffling, gathering quiet.
Fading more now, I hear her voice devolving from articulated speech into a repetition of a hysterical monotone that echoes through this house of holes, “No! No! No!”
I crane my neck up to follow my flashlight’s beam which has fallen to the floor next to me but which still aims in the direction of her voice.
The last thing I see in the off-centered shaft of light is a group of children surrounding her with workman-like demeanor. They wear jeans and branded T-shirts and Velcroed sequined tennies, one-piece knit dresses, denim skirts and pigtails swirling.
They put their hands on her skin, run their grubby fingers through her hair.
One has her knife.
The last thing I hear is her silence.
Bright day streamed through the hole. I’d been looking at it there and again for the last several hours but my head wouldn’t yet let me wake up. Finally I roused, my head aching, my jaw sore from how I landed. I worked it, rubbed my hand over it.
They’d pulled me back into my bedroom. The rain left and the smell of smoke had grown pungent. Maggie the dog lay beside me. First thing I did was feed her. She inhaled the bread and bananas, the first things I could find.
But for the dog’s smacking: the stillness. The quiet. Just me now. A wet broken house full of rocks and distant smoke. I checked the fridge instinctively. The light out, cool but not cold. A cursory survey of the outside revealed destroyed generators, slashed tires on all the cars, even Mom’s, save for Bastian’s beater Bronco. They wanted to hear me coming. Fine. I could easily get another car, but fine. Whatever you guys want. I was pissed now.
I missed the water. I had cuts and stingers all over and wanted to wash them out, wash my face off at least, brush the suede off my teeth, slake a brutal thirst. I felt relief when I remembered the cases of bottled water we’d stored in the garage. When I checked, of course, they were smashed and spilled out. I found a couple bottles intact and chugged one down in seconds. I used the other to rinse my face off.
Back inside, I made my way through the rocks, kicking at some. They hit the walls, popped and echoed. I changed clothes and in Mom and Martin’s bedroom I found the glock and holster and put them back on. My uniform.
As I walked out of the bedroom, my heart panged. There on the dresser by the door was Lord of the Flies, Kodie’s pink gum in an imperfect ball stuck to the green cloth hardback cover. I picked it off and put it on my tongue. It took a few presses of my teeth to get it into chewing shape, but once it moistened it still tasted of hot cinnamon, of Kodie. Her hot laugh in my mouth.
I wanted to collapse with her gone, but I couldn’t. Stony resilience bred within me.
The change of clothes felt so much better than I ever thought a change of clothes could. I collected the Lord of the Flies, a few guns and boxes of bullets, my $1,000 binoculars, and climbed into the only vehicle they’d left me.
Maggie came running out and I opened the door for her to hop in over my lap.
Following the smoke, south. No kids. In the blur of my motion I do notice that the few cairns looked disturbed. The bodies had been pulled out. I’m pushing the Bronco as fast as it will go without losing control. The muffler’s blat in all this quiet heard for miles.
Ask me if I cared anymore.
Now, however—floating along here, I hear them in the trees. They fill my head with euphoric hum. It’s a new-world serenade and its impact is physical. It makes me feel good. They know to do it when I’m feeling sad or tired or scared. Usually it’s all three at once. It calms me. Like I’m at the dentist and the assistant has slipped the nitrous oxide tube into my nostrils. My head fills with sweetness. She asks in a mellifluous, warbled voice, You feeling more relaxed now, Kevin? Good, the light panels on the ceiling looking soft and I can only nod at her.
A lullaby is what it is. It feels so good that I don’t care. Grows stronger as I float south. They’re helping me. They’re easing me down down down to the sea whence came the wave. And when they cut it off… I’m their junkie. More. I keep going in hopes of feeling it again.
I speak these hosannas when I’m feeling their song, as I do again now, which is why I click off.
Now: no song. When they cut it off, I come to my senses. Things clear, I’ve lost hours, but I’ve gone many miles. No portaging necessary for the flood.
Got to tell it faster now, as I’m getting closer.
How many more like me stood upon high watching them do this? Were there any? In over two days the ham found nobody else. Was there somebody in some field outside La Paz watching a similar scene? Some savannah on the outskirts of Nairobi? A chilly expanse near Winnipeg? If there are, the children aren’t wanting us to get together. Seems they’ve moved on from the initial shock and crazy download they all got to burning.