Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (37 page)

Aaron’s Noise roars up in red and black.

The current takes us.

“I’m sorry!” I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can’t barely breathe. “I’m sorry, Manchee!”

“Todd?” he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind.
“Todd?”

“Manchee!” I scream.

Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.

“MANCHEE!”

“Todd?”

And Aaron wrenches his arms and there’s a
CRACK
and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.

And the pain is too much it’s too much it’s too much and my hands are on my head and I’m rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that’s inside me.

And I fall back into it.

And I know nothing more as the river takes us away and away and away.

The sound of water.

And bird noise.

Where’s my safety?
they sing.
Where’s my safety?

Behind it, there’s music.

I swear there’s music.

Layers of it, flutey and strange and familiar–

And there’s light against the darkness, sheets of it, white and yellow.

And warmth.

And softness on my skin.

And a silence there next to me, pulling against me as strong as it ever did.

I open my eyes.

I’m in a bed, under a cover, in a small square room with white walls and sunlight pouring in at least two open windows with the sound of the river rushing by outside and birds flitting in the trees (and music, is that music?) and for a minute it’s not just that I don’t know where I am, I also don’t know
who
I am or what’s happened or why there’s an ache in my–

I see Viola, curled up asleep on a chair next to the bed, breathing thru her mouth, her hands pressed twixt her thighs.

I’m still too groggy to make my own mouth move and say her name just yet but my Noise must say it loud enough cuz her eyes flutter open and catch mine and she’s outta her seat in a flash with her arms wrapped around me and squishing my nose against her collarbone.

“Oh, Jesus,
Todd,
” she says, holding so tight it kinda hurts.

I put one hand on her back and I inhale her scent.

Flowers.

“I thought you were never coming back,” she says, squeezing tight. “I thought you were dead.”

“Wasn’t I?” I croak, trying to remember.

“You were sick,” Viola says, sitting back, knees still on my bed. “
Really
sick. Doctor Snow wasn’t sure you’d ever wake up and when a doctor admits
that
much–”

“Who’s Doctor Snow?” I ask, looking round the little room. “Where are we? Are we in Haven? And what’s that music?”

“We’re in a settlement called Carbonel Downs,” she says. “We floated down the river and–”

She stops cuz she sees me looking at the foot of the bed.

At the space where Manchee ain’t.

I remember.

My chest closes up. My throat clenches shut. I can hear him barking in my Noise.
“Todd?”
he’s saying, wondering why I’m leaving him behind.
“Todd?”
with an asking mark, just like that, forever asking where I’m going without him.

“He’s gone,” I say, like I’m saying it to myself.

Viola seems like she’s about to say something but when I glance up at her, her eyes are shiny and all she does is nod, which is the right thing, the thing I’d want.

He’s gone.

He’s gone.

And I don’t know what to say about that.

“Is that Noise I hear?” says a loud voice, preceded by its own Noise thru a door opening itself at the foot of the bed. A man enters, a
big
man, tall and broad with glasses that make his eyes bug out and a flip in his hair and a crooked smile and Noise coming at me so filled with relief and joy it’s all I can do not to crawl out the window behind me.

“Doctor Snow,” Viola says to me, scooting off the bed to make way.

“Pleased to finally meet you, Todd,” Doctor Snow says, smiling big and sitting down on the bed and taking a device outta his front shirt pocket. He sticks two ends of it into his ears and places the other end on my chest without asking. “Could you take a deep breath for me?”

I don’t do nothing, just look at him.

“I’m checking if your lungs are clear,” he says and I realize what it is I’m noticing. His accent’s the closest to Viola’s I ever heard on New World. “Not exactly the same,” he says, “but close.”

“He’s the one who made you well,” Viola says.

I don’t say nothing but I take a deep breath.

“Good,” Doctor Snow says, placing the end of the device on another part of my chest. “Once more.” I breathe in and out. I find that I
can
breathe in and out, all the way down to the bottom of my lungs.

“You were a very sick boy,” he says. “I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to beat it. You weren’t even giving off Noise until yesterday.” He looks me in the eye. “Haven’t seen that sort of sickness for a long time.”

“Yeah, well,” I say.

“Haven’t heard of a Spackle attack for a
very
long time,” he says. I don’t say nothing to this, just breathe deep. “That’s great, Todd,” the doctor says. “Could you take off your shirt, please?”

I look at him, then over to Viola.

“I’ll wait outside,” she says and out she goes.

I reach behind me to pull my shirt over my head and as I do I realize there’s no pain twixt my shoulderblades.

“Took some stitches, that one,” Doctor Snow says, moving around behind me. He puts the device against my back.

I flinch away. “That’s cold.”

“She wouldn’t leave your side,” he says, ignoring me and checking different places for my breath. “Not even to sleep.”

“How long I been here?”

“This is the fifth morning.”

“Five days?”
I say and he barely has a chance to say yes before I’m pulling back the covers and getting outta the bed. “We gotta get outta here,” I say, a little unsteady on my feet but standing nonetheless.

Viola leans back in the doorway. “I’ve been trying to tell them that.”

“You’re safe here,” Doctor Snow says.

“We’ve heard that before,” I say. I look to Viola for support but all she does is stifle a smile and I realize I’m standing there in just a pair of holey and seriously worn-out underpants that ain’t covering as much as they should. “Hey!” I say, moving my hands down to the important bits.

“You’re safe as you’re going to be anywhere,” Doctor Snow says behind me, handing me a pair of my trousers from a neatly washed pile by the bed. “We were one of the main fronts in the war. We know how to defend ourselves.”

“That was Spackle.” I turn my back to Viola and shove my legs in the trousers. “This is men. A
thousand
men.”

“So the rumours say,” Doctor Snow says. “Even though it’s not actually numerically possible.”

“I don’t know nothing from numerickly,” I say, “but they got guns.”

“
We
have guns.”

“And horses.”

“We’ve got horses.”

“Do you have men who’ll join them?” I say, challenging him.

He don’t say nothing to that, which is satisfying. Then again, it ain’t satisfying at all. I button up my trousers. “We need to go.”

“You need to rest,” the doctor says.

“We ain’t staying and waiting for the army to show up.” I turn to include Viola, turn without thinking to the space where my dog’d be waiting for me to include him too.

There’s a quiet moment when my Noise fills the room with Manchee, just fills it with him, side to side, barking and barking and needing a poo and barking some more.

And dying.

I don’t know what to say about that neither.

(He’s gone, he’s gone.)

I feel empty. All over empty.

“No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to, Todd,” Doctor Snow says gently. “But the eldermen of the village would like to talk to you before you leave us.”

I tighten my mouth. “Bout what?”

“About anything that might help.”

“How can I
help?
” I say, grabbing a washed shirt to put on. “The army will come and kill everyone here who don’t join it. That’s it.”

“This is our home, Todd,” he says. “We’re going to defend it. We have no choice.”

“Then count me out–” I start to say.

“Daddy?” we hear.

There’s a little boy standing in the doorway next to Viola.

An actual boy.

He’s looking up at me, eyes wide open, his Noise a funny, bright, roomy thing and I can hear myself described as
skinny
and
scar
and
sleeping boy
and at the same time there are all kindsa warm thoughts towards his pa with just the word
daddy
repeated over and over again, meaning everything you’d want it to: askings about me, identifying his daddy, telling him he loves him, all in one word, repeated forever.

“Hey, fella,” Doctor Snow says. “Jacob, this is Todd. All woke up.”

Jacob looks at me solemnly, a finger in his mouth, and gives a little nod. “Goat’s not milking,” he says quietly.

“Is she not?” Doctor Snow says, standing up. “Well, we’d better go see if we can talk her into it, hadn’t we?”

Daddy daddy daddy
says Jacob’s Noise.

“I’ll see to the goat,” Doctor Snow is saying to me, “and then I’ll go round up the rest of the eldermen.”

I can’t stop staring at Jacob. Who can’t stop staring at me.

He’s so much closer than the kids I saw at Farbranch.

And he’s so
small
.

Was I that small?

Doctor Snow’s still talking. “I’ll bring the eldermen back here, see if you can’t help us.” He leans down till I’m looking at him. “And if we can’t help you.”

His Noise is sincere, truthful. I believe he means what he says. I also believe he’s mistaken.

“Maybe,” he says, with a smile. “Maybe not. You haven’t even seen the place yet. Come on, Jake.” He takes his son’s hand. “There’s food in the kitchen. I’ll bet you’re starved. Be back within the hour.”

I go to the door to watch them leave. Jacob, finger still in his mouth, looks back at me till he and his pa disappear outta the house.

“How old is that?” I ask Viola, still looking down the hallway. “I don’t even know how old that is.”

“He’s four,” she says. “He’s told me about 800 times. Which seems kind of young to be milking goats.”

“Not on New World, it ain’t,” I say. I turn back to her and her hands are on her hips and she’s giving me a serious look.

“Come and eat,” she says. “We need to talk.”

She leads me to a kitchen as clean and bright as the bedroom. River still rushing by outside, birds still Noisy, music still–

“What
is
that music?” I say, going to the window to look out. Sometimes it seems like I reckernize it but when I listen close, it’s voices changing over voices, running around itself.

“It’s from loudspeakers up in the main settlement,” Viola says, taking a plate of cold meat outta the fridge.