“I looked at the rest of them for help—or for, for pity, or—”
She looks down at the dirt. She got no help and she got no pity. They were as afraid as she was, all the rest of them, Tick and Valentine and Little Man and her old pals Sailor and Delighted, all as scared and confused, all just as firmly under the thumb of their leader. A week from impact and sharply aware of how isolated they had become, as the world narrowed to a pinpoint like the circle of darkness at the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon. As their leader and protector peeled off his layers, showing them the cruelty at his core.
So Astronaut tells Jean to go on now, he says get up, and she does, she gets up, she goes—and as she is telling me this story she is dissolving. She is seeing the memory complete itself out of the fog of forgetfulness, and it is killing her, I can see it. Every sentence is killing her. Every word. “I loved Nico. She was my friend. But as I was walking up those stairs my mind got—I don’t know. Hollow. There was all this shouting, these weird voices shouting, and—like—giggling?”
“You were hallucinating,” I say. “He drugged you.”
She nods. She knows this already, I think. Weird voices and dark streaks from the cruel courage in her tea. Whatever secret ingredient he put in to add to his private fun. His game, his apocalyptic April Fool’s Day joke. Given her overdose and the subsequent patchy spots in her memory, we’re probably talking about a hallucinogen, some sort of dissociative anesthetic; PCP, maybe, or ketamine. But I can’t say with certainty, it’s not my area of expertise, and if it would do any good I would take blood, I would stick her with a needle and catch any lingering molecules still swimming in her veins. Send it to the lab, boys!
The rest of them got much worse, of course. This was Astronaut’s real plan B. Food and water were limited, everything was limited, and he wasn’t going to share any of it, not for a second.
So here comes Jean up the rickety stairs with Astronaut’s sawtooth buck knife, shoved out of the hatch and told the price of her future. Surfing darkly, wild chemical horrors churning in her gut along with the terror. Looking for Nico.
“You know what?” She looks up at me with hope in her eyes, a small spark of joy. “You know what I remember? I remember thinking she’s probably gone. Because she told me she was going to leave, on the stairs she told me. And then with the party, and the speech, I mean, we’d been down there for—I don’t know, half an hour? He sat us down, he gave the speech, it had been time. If she was leaving she’d be gone already. I remember thinking that.”
I’ve thought of it too. It’s in the timeline I’ve got, up in my head.
“But there she was. She was still there,” says Jean. “Why was she still there?”
“Candy,” I say.
“What?”
“It was going to be a hard trip. She took what food she could find.”
She took the time to empty that machine, to prop it with the fork and run a coat hanger or her skinny arms up there and empty it out, she took that time and it cost her her life.
“So you fought her.”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember fighting her? And her fighting you?”
Her hand flies up to her face, her scratches and bruises, and then down again.
“No.”
“You don’t remember the woods?”
She trembles. “No.”
I lean over her, the gun and the knife in my two hands. “What do you remember, Jean?”
She remembers afterward, she says. She remembers running back to the garage, and finding that it was sealed. And understanding, even in her dark and addled desperation, understanding what it meant. The whole thing had been a joke, he had known all along she wouldn’t make it down there. Because Atlee Miller had already come and sealed up the hole, as Astronaut knew that he would.
And then there was just the sink. Just the sink and the knife and knowing what she had done and that she had done it for nothing—for nothing—and then cutting herself open like she had cut Nico open. Pressing the knife in as far as she could stand it, until the blood was pouring out of her and she was shrieking, and running, running from the blood, running out into the woods.
That’s the story. That’s the whole story, she says, and she’s trembling on the ground, her face is streaked with grief, but I’m pacing back and forth above her, that’s the whole story, she says, but there must be more, I have to have more. There are pieces missing. There has to be a reason, for example, that a slitting of the throat presented itself as the logical method—was that directed by Astronaut or was that an improvisation, the most effective means in the moment? And surely she was directed to bring back something. If she was supposedly earning her place in the bunker by killing Nico, there must have been a token to prove it.
I throw myself down in the mud and drop the weapons and grab her shoulders.
“I have more questions,” I tell Jean. Snarling; shouting.
“No,” she says. “Please.”
“Yes.”
Because I can’t solve the crime unless I know everything and the world can’t end with the crime unsolved, that’s all there is to it, so I tighten my grip on her shoulders and demand that she remember.
“We need to go back to the woods, Jean. Back to the part in the woods.”
“No,” she says. “Please—”
“Yes, Jean. Ms. Wong. You find her outside the building. Is she surprised to see you?”
“Yes. No. I don’t remember.”
“Please try to remember. Is she surprised?”
She nods. “Yes. Please, stop.”
“Do you have the knife out at this point—”
“I don’t remember.”
“You chase her—”
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess. Did you chase her through the woods? Over that creek?”
“Please… please stop.”
Jean’s terrified eyes meet mine and it’s working, I can see her seeing it again, being there, I’m doing it, I’m going to get the information I need, she’s back there now at the scene with the knife handle wrapped in her palm, Nico’s struggling weight beneath her. And where was I, I was on the way but I wasn’t here yet, it took me too long, I should have been here to save her but I wasn’t and it’s burning, my blood is burning. I need more, I need all of it.
“Did she beg you for her life?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did she, Jean?”
She can’t speak. She nods, nods weeping, thrashes in my grip.
“Was she screaming?”
Nodding and nodding, helpless.
“She begged you to stop? But you didn’t stop?”
“Please—”
“There are more things I need to know.”
“No,” she says, “no, you don’t—right? You don’t, right? You don’t really, right?”
Her voice is altered, high and pleading, like a little kid, like a toddler, pleading to be told that something unpleasant isn’t really so. I don’t really have to go to the doctor, right? I don’t really have to take a bath. Jean and I hold our pose for a minute, down in the mud, me clutching her shoulders tightly, and I feel it, suddenly, where we’ve gotten to, here, what’s happening. What the asteroid did to her is done, and what Astronaut did to her is done, and now here I am, her last and worst terror, forcing her to stare into this blackness, wade through it like every detail matters, like it can possibly matter.
I let her go and she rolls her head back away from me, emitting low terrified moans like an animal on the slaughterhouse floor.
“Jean,” I say. “Jean. Jean. Jean.”
I say her name until she stops moaning. I say it softly, softer and softer, until it becomes a whisper, “Jean, Jean, Jean,” a soothing small little whisper, just the word, “Jean.”