“ Me either!”
“ My skin is saved! Ha! I’m staying!”
I can’t say that they were all as piggish, crude, and insensitive. Many just took the verdict quietly and calmly with a modicum of self-respect. But others jumped for joy, pigs wallowing in the full glory of their filth.
One by one by one, people held out empty pieces of paper. There were only two that had not had been checked and those belonged to Maria and I. The knowledge of that nearly suffocated me. I felt sweat break open on my face, the neurons of my brain ready to overload and burn out.
All eyes were on us…there was pity in them and guilt. But in some there was a twisted, vicious euphoria. It wasn’t them so now it was a game to see who went on the spit, high drama and nail-biting suspense.
Maria and I looked at each other and the others pressed in, all of them now, eyes wide and shining, licking their lips, some of them nearly drooling. They were eager for it, I tell you. Hungry for it. Like crazed villagers filled with manic glee at the idea of burning one of their own as a witch. I saw the innate brutality and bestiality of the human race at that moment.
And I hated.
God, how I hated.
I swore to myself then and there that I would kill each and everyone of them if I got the chance. I prayed it would be me. I really did. But even before I opened my slip I knew it would be blank. And it was. Maria opened hers, smiled thinly, held up her slip with the X on it. “It’s me,” she said quite calmly. “I’m the one. I’m chosen.”
Everyone sighed…that unbroken circuit of tension died.
They were all safe and the fun was over.
But, without knowing it, they had just signed their own death warrants.
10
Doc decided to soften the rules.
Maybe after the Murph thing he saw that he had to and I guess I looked on him a little more compassionately because he did so. He did not cull Maria off. He did not lock her in a cell or put her into isolation. He let her and the other five have twenty-four hours in which to come to terms with themselves and their maker. Nobody guarded the doors during that time. If you were chosen and you decided to run, take your chances with the hordes of Wormboys, nobody would stop you. Dragna would have his six either way. But the most amazing and frightening thing of all was how many didn’t. How many just accepted it and walked willingly out into the killing fields.
I guess that says something about the human condition I don’t even want to contemplate.
Later, I was alone with Maria in her room. I don’t think she was ever lovelier than that night…her long black hair, her big dark eyes, her smooth olive skin. I told her we would run together. We would fight our way out and make a life for ourselves somewhere, somehow.
But she simply shook her head. “No, Tommy. What is done is done.”
I wanted to slap her, to beat her unconscious and steal away with her while there was still time. But mostly I wanted to hold her and never let go. The tears came. I hadn’t cried in a long time, but I did then.
Maria looked at me and owned me with her eyes. “You can do one thing for me, Tommy,” she said, as strong and persevering as only those of Latin blood can possibly be.
“Anything,” I said, still trying hard not to sob and failing miserably.
She touched my cheek, tracing the track of a tear from my eye to the corner of my lips with one long finger. “You can spend the night with me. You can make me feel like a real woman one last time, like a human being.”
She fell into my arms and I melted into her as quick.
11
The next morning I found Doc in his little office. He looked surprised to see me. He knew I had something to say and he kept quiet, waited until I worked it out and laid it at his feet.
“I want to be part of it,” I said.
“Part of what, Tommy?”
“You know. The lottery.”
“You were.”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. I want to go with Sonny and Conroy and Ape when they march them out tonight. I want to be part of that.”
“Tommy-”
“No, listen, Doc. Maria is my friend. I love her. I think she loves me. I don’t want her going out there alone without a friend. She needs me to be there. To…to see her off. She needs it. So do I. I don’t think I can ever be part of this unless you let me.”
He sighed. “Tommy, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Before he spent twenty minutes trying to steer me around to his way of thinking, I said, “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass, Doc. I know I’ve been nothing but trouble…but this isn’t easy. You gotta understand how hard all this is for me. For all of us. Just let me do this. This is something I need.”
Doc just stared at me for a time like he was trying to read what was in my mind, but I had it locked up tight as a vault. He was not getting in there. I emoted sincerity mixed with pain and confusion, grief and loss. But certainly nothing rebellious.
Doc started to shake his head, then he just sighed. “Are you sure, Tommy? Are you sure this is what you want?”
I nodded. “More than anything.”
Poor Doc. He was such a fucking fool. Always in charge. Always having to deal with it all. I almost felt sorry for him at that moment. “Okay, Tommy. If it’s what you want. Go ahead.”
“Thanks, Doc. This means a lot to me.”
He smiled and patted my hand like a favored uncle and I left his office. In the corridor I started grinning. None of them knew it, but I was about to bring hell down on each and every one of them.
12
We marched the six out exactly one hour after dark that night.
Sonny, Conroy, Ape, and me. We were all armed with pump shotguns and. 9mm sidearms. Ape had an Army-issue flamethrower strapped to his back that he had looted from an armory. We were ready to defend ourselves if need be, but it wouldn’t come to that. The lottery didn’t work that way. We were the meat-bringers, so to speak, and you don’t kill the steward that sets your table.
Ape and Sonny led the way out to the killing fields, Conroy and me in the back, the chosen ones sandwiched in-between. Maria was there, of course. Mrs. Pearson, a young woman named Sylvia whose husband was in the shelter. Three men-Johnson, Hill, and Keeson. They all had the same dead-eyed look of manic desperation in their eyes and to look into them was to know the depths of hell and how hot it burned.
I wasn’t naive.
I knew that Doc did not trust me anymore than I really trusted him or any of the others. That’s why Conroy was stationed behind me. If I caused trouble, I wouldn’t be coming back.
The killing fields are an easy city block out past the shelter and the parking lot. Like the name implies, just a field. Nothing but grass and a number of wooden poles speared into the ground. I’m not sure what their use was back in the good old days of the weather station, but now they had been put to an extremely dark purpose. As we walked into the grass, a ghost of moon began to rise. And as it did, there came a rumbling, a pounding, a rhythmic hammering from somewhere out in the hills that surrounded us. It was a jarring, discordant sound that echoed around inside your skull. It was like those voodoo drums in old movies, but much more primitive.
“Hell’s that?” I said.
“Wormboys,” Sonny said. “Tonight’s the night and they know it. They’re getting excited. They’re celebrating and beating their drums.”
They weren’t drums, of course. The Wormboys were pounding on garbage cans and twenty-five gallon drums, crates and barrels, anything handy. Just the sound of it made my guts crawl up the back of my throat.
“Doesn’t it ever stop?” I said.
“Sure…later,” he told me. “Keep walking.”
Ten minutes later, we were at the killing fields. The shadows had grown long and we had to use our flashlights to do what had to be done. The poles sat atop a low hill, splintered and cracked, leaning this way and that. There were eight of them, but we only needed the six. I couldn’t get the image out of my head that this was like some kind of pagan sacrificial altar or sacred Druidic grove for secret offerings to primordial, hungry gods. Maybe that’s what it was.