Afterland Page 27

  Then two shots, metal ringing. The end of the lock. Zara smashes the door open, crosses the room. She grabs her by the hair. “You stupid bitch,” she roars in her face. Billie kicks against her, kicks the desk, trying to wrench herself free.

  “Get up. Up,” Zara yells. She drags her out of the bedroom, through the kitchen. Broken glass and the table overturned. There’s blood on the floor, one of the women, Cornrows, crawling across the linoleum, grunting like an animal, a small animal in a burrow nesting down to sleep.

  Outside, another woman is capsized on the concrete stairs, staring upward at the sky. A shoddy drama student. Oh, Romeo. Her shirt is black and wet, making little sucking sounds, like the automatic pool cleaner accidentally surfacing, slurping at the outside air. Her fingers are closed around a gun, Billie doesn’t know what kind, a big one. I’ll have categories of firearm for two hundred, please. Zara kicks the gun away.

  The woman’s fingers crunch and pop under the boot, and the gun tink-tinks down the stairs. But the woman doesn’t notice, and her chest has stopped making that pool-cleaner noise, and Zara is dragging Billie down the stairs, toward the grass. She’s half-up, half-stumbling, trying to brace herself. I’d like to live for one hundred, please.

  A starburst in the night, from the campfire. A woman caught in strobe, bare arms, gun leveled right at them. And gone again. Zara fires blindly. One, two shots, loud as fireworks inside her skull. Billie can’t help giving a little shriek. There’s blood running down her neck again. Old wound or new, she can’t tell.

  Rico appears at Zara’s elbow, blood on her face, her arm bleeding. “I’ll cover you,” she says. Meaning Zara. Not her. No one cares about her.

  Firecracker explosions. More strobe effects as Ash runs across the grass toward them, lighting up the grimace on her face, teeth bared, pure hatred or joy, but it’s death coming for them, skull gleaming, and then abruptly nothing. Darkness, and the flames from the firepit, but no more silhouettes, no more strobe. And Fontaine, she recognizes her voice, she knows that voice, pitching and wailing somewhere in the muddy black.

  Stumbling across the grass. A woman’s body, facedown. Thank God it’s facedown.

  “Get in the fucking car. Stupid cunt. Get in!” Zara shoves her in the front seat and Billie smashes her leg against the dashboard.

  “Ow,” she whimpers. The door slams.

  Zara climbs in the driver’s seat, starts the car, and shoves it into reverse. In the rear lights, Billie can see Rico running for the car, firing into the dark behind her. At what? How many of them are left? She’s trying to do the math. Solve for dead.

  The tires spin on the muddy ground, and then the back door is open and Rico is tumbling into the car, laughing. “Thanks for having us!” she calls back. “It’s been a real pleasure!”

  “Go, fucking go!” She’s laughing still, eyes wild, loading a new clip into her gun, and they’re bolting through the forest, which was so very green and has turned so black. And then a boom-crack, like a supersonic jet splitting the sound barrier, breaking reality into flying shards of glass and a spray of blood.

  Billie screams. “Keep going!” She yanks off her sweatshirt and swipes it across the red mist on the windscreen.

  Zara is bleeding from her ear. Where most of her ear used to be, but she never shifts her focus from the road. More shots crack out after them. The wind is howling at the remains of the rear window, where a jagged fang of glass still clings to the frame.

  The dirt road is a golden path in the headlights, but it swerves and dips, the giant trunks of trees spiking up out of the darkness like traps. The car bangs over a bump so hard Billie’s jaws snap shut with the impact. The taste of iron fills her mouth. There are more world-splintering cracks. She imagines the bullets leaving contrails through the dark that the quad bikes will be able to follow.

  And then they’re free of the forest, skidding onto the tar and Billie has never felt more relieved. There’s a scraping and clanging noise from the front of the car.

  “You hit?” Zara says.

  “No,” Billie says. “I’m okay. The car—”

  “It’s the bumper dragging. Worry about it later.”

  But Rico. Billie glances back. Rico is not okay. Rico is slumped against the seat like a bad drunk. The kind who has already thrown up twice, and is probably drooling bile and spittle, and will cost you your five-star Uber rating. She turns back to face the road, the bumper scraping and the bloody shirt clenched in her lap and Zara’s knuckles tight on the wheel, like a row of tiny skulls to match the one tattooed on the web of her thumb.

  She’s driving too fast, especially given the noise the vehicle is making, metal screeching. The speedometer pushes over eighty. Trees rush past, flickering in the distorting dark.

  “Let me be clear now,” says Zara, cool, as if blood isn’t sliding down her neck and cheek, black oil in the dark. “When we stop to fix the bumper, I am going to throw Rico’s body out of the car.”

  “Okay,” Billie says. She could grab the wheel, crash the car into a ditch, snatch her gun in the confusion. But chaos has not worked historically as a strategy here. Christ, don’t let her die like this, her face plastered with Fontaine’s terrible makeup.

  “I want a reason I should not do the same with you.”

  Billie knows what she’s asking. The betrayal doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.

  “You need me,” she says, carefully. “No one else can get close to him. You want him alive? You need me, alive.”

  Zara doesn’t answer and for long minutes the only sounds are the howl of the engine and the clatter of the bumper.

  “I ever tell you my favorite joke?” Billie ventures.

  Zara doesn’t say anything.

  “I’ll tell you anyway.” You can fend off reality if you talk fast enough. “Stop me if you know this one. A bear walks into a bar.” The words come more easily. It’s a relief. She’s told this a thousand times. The power of habit. She avoids looking in the rearview mirror.

  “And he sits his fuzzy butt down on the barstool and looks around. It’s early afternoon. The only other customer is a decrepit skank down the other side of the counter, nursing a whisky. And I mean decrepit. She’s got nicotine-colored hair, a leather miniskirt, and thigh-high boots she should have retired thirty years ago.”

  “It is a shitty bar,” Zara says. A tiny glance in her direction.

  “Yeah. Exactly. But the bear is in a good mood today.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe he has something to celebrate. Or it’s just a good day. Can’t he be in a good mood? It’s not relevant to the story. So the bear says to the bartender, ‘Hi there, my good man, what a good day it is! I’m in a good mood. And to celebrate, I would like an ice-cold frosty beer.’”

  “Beer is disgusting.”

  “But the bartender is busy, or he’s pretending to be. He’s cleaning glasses with that little cloth, you know the one, really polishing them up. He doesn’t even make eye contact, which is rude. And what he says next is even ruder, though it’s delivered in this very calm, bored voice. He says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, we don’t serve bears beer here in this bar.’”

  Zara grunts.

  “The bear is taken aback. The bear is outraged. That’s ursine discrimination. And he says, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, give me a fuckin’ beer! Now.’”

  This is too close an echo to Zara’s commands back at the camp. Open the door. Now. Billie stumbles on.

  “And the bartender, still buffing those glasses, so he has something to do, says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, we don’t serve belligerent bears beer here in this bar.’ And this really pisses the bear off. If you thought he was mad before, he’s frothing at the mouth now.”

  “Rabies.”

  “Practically. And he says, ‘Look here, my good man, if you don’t give me a fuckin’ beer right fuckin’ now, I’ll, I’ll…’ And the bear looks around that poky bar. And his eyes alight on that old has-been hussy all the way down the other side, si
pping her whisky. He grins, a very toothy, very mean bearish grin. ‘If you don’t, I’ll gobble up that customer, boots and all.’

  “‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the bartender says, dispassionately, although he’s at least moved on to cleaning a different glass, holding it up to the light. And it’s spotless, okay? He’s a champion cleaner. ‘We don’t serve belligerent bully bears beer here in this bar.’

  “‘That’s it!’ the bear snarls, slamming his enormous paws and his enormous claws down on the counter. He gets up to his full intimidating height and with a roar, charges down to the other end of the bar and gulps down that poor woman, boots and all, with chomping and crunching and screaming. Blood and bear drool everywhere. And he comes back, wiping one bloody paw across his furry face and he plonks his fuzzy butt down on the bar stool. He picks a bit of skank gristle out from between his teeth.”

  Zara grunts in appreciation at that one.

  “And he hisses, very cold, very angry: ‘Now. Give. Me. My. Beer.’ The bartender has gone pale, but he’s still buffing-buffing those glasses, consummate professional here, and he says, more of a squeak this time, ‘I’m sorry, sir. But we don’t serve belligerent bully bears…on drugs beer here in this bar.’

  “The bear is nonplussed.”

  “What is nonplussed,” Zara asks.

  “Um, confused. Yeah? ‘What?’ the bear says. ‘What do you mean?’ He actually turns around to see if the bartender is addressing a different bear, maybe standing behind him. He’s a little wounded, actually, to be so falsely accused. ‘I’m not on drugs!’ he says.

  “‘I’m sorry sir,’ the bartender says.” She pauses for effect. “‘That was a bar bitch you ate.’”

  Billie drums her hands in a rimshot.

  “I don’t understand,” Zara says after a long pause.

  “Yeah, well,” Billie says. “Who understands anything.”

  39.

  Cole: Stash

  Birdsong: a sweet-pitched ascendance that dips into a chirpy trill. Devon would have known what species it was. Cole used to tease him about it because the closest she ever came to bird identification was “the small brown one that’s not a pigeon over there.”

  Buttery light seeps through the cheap curtains. A listless fan stirs the air, already as thick and hot as a heavy breather on the phone. She guesses that never happens anymore. Another one for the nostalgia files.

  She takes a second to anchor herself in time and place. Airport motel in Tulsa. Right—she’s struggling to keep up. Ten days since they left Ataraxia. Four, no five, days since they joined the Church.

  She sits up. Mila is missing, but the mattress has been stripped bare and the bath is running.

  She gets up and goes to rap on the door. “Hey, it’s me. Can I come in?”

  Mila opens the door, ruddy with crying. The sheets are in the bath, steaming. Her hands are flushed up to the elbows from being submerged in the hot water.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The sheets. I…I…”

  “Oh. Oh, tiger. It’s normal. It happens to everyone.” But why now, puberty? The timing. She doesn’t let her dismay show. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

  “But if they find out?”

  “We’ll have to make sure they don’t. We’ll be extra careful. Look at me.” She tilts Mila’s face to the light—there’s the faintest fuzz above her lip. “I’ll pick up some razors. We’ve got this, okay?”

  “Mom,” her voice creaks with humiliation.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Really.”

  Faith pokes her head in. Worst possible moment. “Rolling out at oh nine hundred hours.” Military time. That must be a hard habit to shake. “Best get moving if you want breakfast. We’re heading to the diner down the way.” She hesitates, takes in the scene. “Everything all right in here?”

  “Just a little accident.” Cole moves to block her view.

  “Oh, her period starting? Congratulations! Be sure you use cold water, baby!”

  “Not that…” Cole closes the bathroom door, lowers her voice, but pitches it loud enough for Mila to hear. “She…wets the bed sometimes. It’s PTSD. She gets nightmares.”

  “Oh, I hear that. I wake up in a cold sweat, find I’ve soaked the sheets. Saw some bad stuff go down when I was in the National Guard.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone, Faith. She’s already a prepubescent bundle of anxiety, and it’s so humiliating for her.”

  “I got you, sis. Don’t worry. We got enough sorrows to deal with. You handle the Mom business, I’ll handle all other kinds of trouble.” She winks and pats her thigh, revealing a hard, familiar outline.

  “Is that a gun? I didn’t know the Church carried.” Cole tries to cover her shock.

  “Just me. We always have at least one Soldier of God traveling with the missions. You can still run into bad news. Taking all the men away doesn’t mean everything’s safer. Junkies are still junkies. People are still poor and desperate and hungry, or trash—plain and simple.”

  “Have you ever—?”

  “Not since I left the military. Haven’t had to. You can reason with most people, and this here”—she pats the lump under her Apologia—“provides a compelling counterargument to the stubborn ones.”

  “I’d better go help Mila.”

  “Ah, she’ll be all right. Less embarrassing if you leave her to it, I reckon. Besides, I was hoping you’d take one more look at the radiator for me. I want to check it before we hit the road. Don’t want the engine to overheat and we get stuck out here.”

  “Sure. You go get breakfast. Give me the keys and I’ll take care of it.”

  She dresses and walks down the hill to the nearly barren parking lot, with tufts of grass pushing up through the cracks in the concrete. It reminds her of the time she tried to give her dolls a haircut, the raw exposure of those plastic scalps with their pinhole bristles.

  Yesterday she’d used a trick she learned from her old man—egg white and curry powder can gum up the holes in a radiator long enough to get you where you're going. She never knew this about herself, that being able to fix things with her hands would be as satisfying as those stupid cell phone games she used to play.

  She emerges from under the hood to see Sister Compassion, a.k.a. Sister Embezzler, in the bus with her arms raised up as if she is praise be-ing. Cole ducks down again, out of sight, but still able to see. Compassion is not praising the Lord, but reaching into a cubbyhole in the ceiling. Stealing? She’s shared in the Circle of Progress her hope for the future: that she’ll be able to reconnect with those people in need whom she cheated out of their money. It’s her holy mission to track them down and make amends. Level five on the Ladder to Redemption, which means she is nearly there: only two to go.

  Now she looks around furtively, takes down a cloth bag, shuffles through it and then stuffs the whole thing back in the hidden compartment. Interesting. What does Temperance call her, Sister Purse-strings?

  Compassion startles as she opens the door of the bus to find Cole there, wiping grease from her hands. “Sister Patience! You gave me the fright of my life. What are you doing lurking out here?”

  “Faith asked me to look at the radiator.”

  “Ah. Yes. I forgot you have that blessing. I was checking…” she flushes. “It’s my thing. My punishment from God. I have to touch every seat where we’ve been sitting at the end of our day’s journey, except Chastity moved yesterday, because of the sun. So I had to do it again.”

  “OCD. I understand.” And yet it’s the first time I’ve seen you do it.

  “Yes, well. Have you had breakfast yet? Because we’re leaving soon.” The nun is definitely on the defensive. Is the Church a front for smuggling?

  “Best get my hotcakes on!” Cole cranks up the fake cheer.

  They enter the diner, where the air is freezer-crisp, the air-con cranked up too high. The machine is audibly laboring under the sounds of early 2000s hits belting out from the jukebox. OutKast segues into Timb
aland with bouncy glee. The TVs mounted above the bar counter are dead and blank. One screen is spiderwebbed from a neat O left of center. Bullet wound. Sports no more! But it was probably the news that inspired some not-so-long-ago patron to take a potshot at it.

  Even with long periods of seclusion from TV, Cole has noticed that sport is still the world’s unifying opiate of choice; it’s just that now women players actually get airtime, in between the nostalgia reruns. There are protests about this too—“dishonoring our heroes!”—but football is football with its cheerful bloodlust, baseball is gallant patriotism, basketball is grace and sweat and leaps of faith. And if you squint at the screen, you can pretend the figures on the field are more manly than they are.

  The hostess, wearing a greasy apron over her jeans, grimaces to see yet more nuns. They have already colonized half the restaurant in little clusters, delicately forking food into their mouths, their Speaks clipped aside. The short-order cook is frying macon, and it turns Cole’s stomach. It’s too close to the thick plumes of smoke from the crematoriums working overtime, or the DIY funeral pyres people resorted to when the waiting lists grew too long and the bodies were piling up in the street. She feels sick remembering the layer of greasy ash that blew over the base at Lewis-McChord, coating the washing on the line, smearing every surface. She is confounded that anyone could face the reek of anything resembling bacon ever again.

  She slides into the plastic booth beside Mila, who is chatting happily to Generosity and Temperance, the humiliation of the night-time spill buried deep. But then there’s another spill, this time food down her front. Generosity leans across to dab at her Apologia, a motherly gesture that makes Cole bristle.

  “Whoops!” Cole breezily plucks the napkin from Generosity’s hand, dunks the tip in the water glass, and scrubs at Mila’s chest. It’s a glutinous combination of pancake and egg and maple syrup, which she can only hope is as fake as the pork substitute, because it’s probably five years past its expiry date.