Coping (6 page)

“Breathe through your mouth,” Gabe
hisses. His aura is arcing high, splashed with volcanic reds. My body reacts,
going all taunt, the monster drifting her nails down my brain.

“Control your energy,” I hiss at
him. “You’re going haywire.”

But the thing is, I’m kind of going
haywire too.

“Sorry.” Gabe swallows loudly, and
his energy starts to stabilize. Those reds don’t go away though.

Tarren walks down the central
aisle, sweeping his flashlight inside each stable. Three on each side of the
barn facing each other. Small whimpers and sobs cut the air each time his light
hits another stall. The smell is horrific. Uncleaned bodies, putrefied flesh,
shit and piss—all mixed within the swampy heat of the unvented barn.

“There are more than seven,” Tarren
says when he reaches the end of the aisle. His voice is tight but steady.

“I can’t feel the ones who are
dead,” I whisper and have to repeat it so he hears me.

I take a step forward.

“Not yet,” Gabe says to me. “Let
him give the all clear.” Tarren walks back toward us, his flashlight tilted up
to reveal heavy wooden beams above.

“No wings,” Tarren says. “Put one
in the second stable to the left and the other in the third on the right. Clamp
them in just in case they wake up before the authorities arrive.”

We act quickly. I walk down the
aisle toward the last stable on the right. Each is filled with hay and the limp
forms of humans, at least two, sometimes three to a stall. Their wrists are
cuffed in front of them with plastic ties, and their ankles are shackled to a
central peg planted in the back. Both these precautions seem like overkill.

The captives are barely alive. Actually,
some of them aren’t even that. They are all young, late teens, early twenties,
dressed incongruously in clubbing outfits that have been torn and stained. 
They are pale, shivering, their arms and legs festering with sores. Most lie in
the filthy straw or huddle in a corner. A few look up at us with terrified
eyes; most stare at a random fixed point and blink slowly. The rest are
unconscious or dead.

There are also three rusted buckets
in each stall. One holds water. Another is filled with something that looks
like dried oatmeal. The third, I guess, was supposed to be a toilet, but it
looks and smells like most of the hostages haven’t been using it.

None of them speak. I see bruises
and lacerations on almost every face.

I make it to the last stall, though
my legs are barely holding me up. My brain is actively trying to eject the
visions of what I’m seeing. The stench is so thick and cloying that I think I
can taste it even through the filter of the bandanna.

There are two bodies already in the
stall. One is dead. A cloud of gnats fills the cavities of his eyes and crawls
around his nostrils. I start gagging, even as I lower Rain onto the stained
straw.

“I tried to close his eyes, but I
can’t reach him,” a paper dry voice whispers.

This comes from the other occupant
of the stall. I know that she is a young girl—teens by the cut of her
hardly-there black clothes—but she looks old. Incredibly old. Her skin is pale,
hanging off her face and frame like her body deflated. There are still smudges
of eyeliner on her cheeks, and her Kool-Aid red hair is matted around her head.
She looks part Holocaust survivor, part alien.

Her luminous green eyes latch to my
face, and I am surprised to see no fear in them…until I realize her features
are bereft of any emotion; lost in a mind-numbing shock that I remember well.

“You’re not the other ones,” she
whispers.

I nod, unsure of what to say.

“And you’ve brought Bailey back. Is
he alive?”

I nod again and reach for the cuff.
The girl watches my hand.

“You’re wearing a funny hat,” the
girl says, “and you’re all wet, which means this is just a dream.”

I roll up Rain’s pant legs and see
that both ankles are deeply gouged from the cuff. He’s waking up again, moaning
and shivering. He must have some awareness of where he is, because he starts
muttering, “no, no, no”.

I push his pant legs back down and
cuff him on his left leg over the fabric. I keep the cinch loose, but it must
still hurt, because he flinches, and his eyes open.

“Bailey,” the girl whispers to him.
“You’re with me and Rick again.”

Rain’s eyes drift to her and then
to me, then to this cuffed ankle.

“No, it’s not like that,” I start,
but then he loses consciousness again.

“We’re the good guys,” I whisper.

***

“Alright, listen up.” Gabe’s voice
is a little strained, but loud enough to echo through the barn.  “My name is
Agent Adama with the X-Files division. You’ve all been kidnapped and held
prisoner by a deranged and violent cult. They’ve been pumping you full of drugs
to keep you passive. Drugs that cause really bad trips and major
hallucinations.  Whatever crazy shit you think you might have seen or
experienced over the last couple of days was just a result of the drugs. My
partners and I took this cult down. Killed every single one of those bastards.
But there are more hidden cells all over the country. They are very secretive
and deadly and will come after anyone who gets in their way. The police and
medical assistance are coming to free you. I strongly advise you not to talk
about what has happened here, or the cult may come after you again. Oh, and
don’t mention us either. We’re so hardcore and badass that the government
disavows all knowledge of our existence.”

Gabe stops, looks around, and his
aura flickers again, all angry spikes of red. “I uh…” his voice is suddenly
thick with gravel. “We’re very sorry for all the terrible things that have
happened to you, but you’re safe now. Try to…I know this sounds like bullshit,
but try and move on. My partners and I will keep fighting this cult. We’ll
waste every single one of those sick fucks.”

It’s time to go, but I haven’t
moved. I’m still in the last stall on the right, listening to Rain whimper,
watching the gnats feed on the eyes of the dead boy who I think must have been
really handsome before he came here. I randomly notice that Rain is the only
one not wearing clubbing clothes.

I feel Tarren coming up behind me,
and I know I should stand up. Face him. Walk out. But I just keep kneeling,
keep letting my senses reel and overwhelm me.

“Come on,” Tarren says. His voice
is soft, not angry like I’d expect.

“Nothing will be the same,” the
girl whispers. “Ever again.” I recognize that traumatized expression.

“No it won’t,” Tarren and I say at
the same time. We look at each other. More accurately, my eyes latch onto the
rock steady flow of his aura. My body naturally attunes to his energy output,
and that muddy blue—hard as the granite in his face—pulls me back from the edge
of panic.

I stand up and back out of the stall.
Before we go, Tarren leans over the dead boy. With the cuff of his sleeve, he
wipes away the gnats from the boy’s eyes and closes his lids.

This is how Tarren amazes me
sometimes, with his strength, with these tiny glimpses of his heart just when
I’d given up on him having one.

“Thank you,” the girl says. “Now he
won’t stare at me.”

“Come on,” Tarren says to me again,
but this time his words are a growl. At last I see his energy slipping away
from his iron grip. All bloody reds of fury. I wonder what his aura would look
like if he ever truly let it go, who he really is beneath all those layers of
ice.

Gabe is waiting for us at the
entrance. “It will be over soon,” he calls out to the prisoners. “I know it
doesn’t seem like it now but…” His voice cracks. “Shit. Things will get better.
I swear it.”

He pulls open the door for us,
unleashing bright sunlight into this dank hell hole. Tarren leaves first. I’m
about to follow him, but instead I stop and look back. These stables will haunt
me, the lingering wisps of broken auras calling to that secret sense of mine.
That skeletal girl with the Kool-Aid red hair and green eyes. The boy Rain,
trapped here, probably because of me.

A hand takes my arm. I look at
Gabe, ashamed at the tears free falling down my cheeks.

“I know,” he says softly and leads
me out of the barn.

Gabe takes the wheel of the Murano.
I slide into the back. We pull off the bandannas and hats.

As soon as we start moving, I say,
“Call them an ambulance, Tarren.”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“When we get back to Poughkeepsie.
We can’t have the fire engines and police cars see us coming from the house.”

“People are dying back there,” I
cry, surprised—though I guess I shouldn’t be—at how unhinged my voice sounds.

“I’ll drive fast,” Gabe says, and he
does. We crank over that dirt road. I’m balling my hands into tight fists while
thoughts, feelings, and emotions slosh around in my brain making me sick.

We hit a paved road. “Now. Do it
now Tarren,” I say.

He takes a heavy breath, but pulls
an extra phone from the dashboard. “This clean?” he asks his brother.

“Yeah.”

Tarren dials 911, identifies
himself as “Troy” and calmly explains that a deranged cult has set itself on
fire, leaving behind a barn filled with captured innocents. Tarren describes in
detail that the victims are starved and severely dehydrated, that they will
need immediate calories, liquids and heat to restore their core temperature.
His voice is so steady, so monotone that it’s almost unreal. He finishes the
call by noting that the captives have been drugged and are hallucinating
heavily.

The voice on the other end of the
phone squawks questions. Tarren cuts off the call, removes the SIM card and
tosses the small green chip out the window. Then he peels off his gloves and
tucks them into his pants pocket.

We’re all quiet after this. Gabe’s
energy is still crackling around him, bright and flagrant. I lie down across
the backseat and tuck my feet into my chest. The silence doesn’t last. Not with
Gabe in the car.

“That’s the biggest one we’ve ever
seen,” he says.

“They’re getting bolder,” Tarren
confirms.

“And sloppy. That was an easy trail
to follow.”

“Some of those kids will talk.”

“Yeah, but they’re so disoriented,
the cops will put it down to hallucinations.”

“It’s going to break eventually,”
Tarren looks at his brother.

Gabe shrugs. “We’ll deal when we
get there. Crossing bridges and shit.” He glances at me in the rearview mirror.
“Maya, you saved that kid’s life. You dragged him right out of the fire.”

“Tarren saved him,” I mumble.

“But Tarren would have never gotten
to practice his French kissing skills if it weren’t for you. You and he can go
halfsies on the save.”

“Milo,” I say, remembering the
boy’s name, the ash caking his face and his weak aura. I wonder if he’ll even
survive.

“Your sense for energy is very
sharp,” Tarren says, and his voice is low and careful. Is this a compliment, or
merely a further acknowledgement of the danger I present? I can’t ever fucking
tell what’s on his mind.

Gabe pulls over as a squad of fire
trucks speed past. Two ambulances follow.

“Fuckers,” Gabe sighs. “You told
them there were nine victims.”

“Small town,” Tarren shrugs.

“God dammit!” Gabe’s voice is high,
flushed with all the anger swirling around him. “We put our lives on the line,
and they only muster two ambulances. Some of those kids are gonna-”

“Gabe, stop. We did what we could.”
Tarren’s voice is quiet, and his eyes are pinned to the rearview mirror, to me,
because the muscles are tensing in my body, and the song is calling, calling,
calling on the waves of Gabe’s glowing aura.

“Tarren, that barn…” Gabe’s voice
cracks.

“For her,” Tarren says quietly,
“stay calm for her.”

“Oh,” Gabe glances at me in the
backseat. “Oh shit. Sorry.”

“I’m…fine,” I manage through my
fused jaw.

“I didn’t, I mean…god.” Gabe throws
his head forward and sighs. His aura is soothing out, pulling in close to his
body.  He gets back on the road, and we’re quiet again.

As my mind shudders back to life, a
new stray thought slips through my weakened barriers. Not a thought really, a
sort of spark of conviction, which I study carefully. But it’s still too new,
too unsettling.

“Maya, you okay? Can a Chuck Norris
joke possibly assist in any way?” Gabe is looking back at me, and he’s got his
elf eyes and mischief mouth all arranged into its usual cocksure expression.
“Chuck Norris can hot wire any vehicle simply by putting his hands on the
steering wheel and telling the car to go.”

I sit up, wipe off my tears. “I’m
okay,” I tell him and try to mean it.

“We should do something to
celebrate your save,” Gabe continues. “Just you and me. After we get back and
cleaned off, let’s break into a pound the next town over. Find you some mean,
grizzled big dog that no one would ever adopt.” Gabe’s aura jumps in short
little spikes. He’s lying, and I wonder what he’s really up to. “That okay with
you?” He looks at Tarren.

Usually Tarren doesn’t like to
deviate from a plan or take any additional risk, no matter how small. Now,
though, he just seems tired. “Don’t get caught,” is all he says.

Back at the motel, Gabe takes the
shower first. He usually sings, but today he is quiet. I remember how he slit
the throat of the angel Hendricks, how those bloody bubbles slipped out of the
angel’s lips just before he died. I wonder where Gabe puts these memories, how
he shuts them out so effectively.

While Gabe is preoccupied, I walk
over to Tarren’s room next to ours. His shower is going too, so I wait at the
door.

I carefully unwrap that spark of
conviction in my mind, feed it a few thoughts and watch it flicker into a small
flame. This night has forced me to confront the uncomfortable reality that me
and my problems might not be the center of the universe; that Ryan was not the
only angel victim, that mine was not the only life forever torqued and spun off
the blissful path of ignorance and happiness.

There might just be other reasons
to fight besides getting revenge on Grand.

Images of the barn, those filthy,
fly-infested stables filled with dead and dying teenagers, are crystal clear in
my mind, every single detail preserved within my enhanced memory. This is where
things are heading if the angels win.

Tarren is quick and efficient as
always, in and out of the water in less than five minutes. I feel his energy
roiling hot and angry.

This always happens when he sees
his scars in the mirror. Sometimes he will stop and study them. I know, because
I can feel his tortured energy pulsing through the entire house, and I caught
him doing it once—something we never talk about.

I knock softly on his door. “It’s
me,” I call.

“A minute,” he says, gruff and
distracted. His energy flattens down, and I marvel at how well he controls it
now. He’s a master of his moods, able to pack up his emotions and hold them
tight all day. The door opens. Tarren’s wearing jeans and a gray long-sleeved
shirt. His hair is wet and spikey like he just quickly rubbed a towel over it.

“What is it?” he says. There’s a
new shadow of concern on his face, and for once I think I know exactly what’s
on his mind. He’s remembering how well I could feel those auras in the barn
even 300 meters out. He wonders if I can feel his; if I felt his pain just now.

I keep my face blank, trying for
that same impenetrable mask that Tarren uses so successfully on me when he
doesn’t want me anywhere near his thoughts and emotions.

“I thought you and Gabe were going
to break into the pound,” he says.

“I want to fight,” I tell him.

“I know that.”

“No. Not just for me anymore. Not
just for Ryan. I want to fight for those people in the barn. For Milo. For
Sunshine and Rain.”

“Who?”

“I want to stop as many angels as
we can, save as many people as possible.” I remember how I froze up when I had
a chance to shoot Hendricks. Gabe took him down, but what if things had turned
out differently? What if Hendricks had hurt Gabe, even killed him while I was a
useless bystander, paralyzed with fear?

“Okay.” Tarren backs away from the
door, and I follow him into the room. Tarren turns toward the window. I think
he just wants something to look at that isn’t me. “Maya, this thing we’re
doing…this way we’re fighting…”

“I’m not stupid,” I cut him off.
“We don’t know how many angels are out there. We don’t know where they are.
They multiply faster than you and Gabe can kill them, and I think this “cure”
you’re working on is a load of bullshit.”

I stop, expecting Tarren to
contradict me. He doesn’t. What he does do is look at me, appraising me with
those sharp eyes of his.

“We’re fighting a losing war aren’t
we?” I ask.

Tarren and I stare at each other.
Sometimes I want to be hard like him, cold. I feel like I’m filled with fire
and it will eventually gutter me out to nothing but ash.

“Yes,” Tarren says, “I think we
are.”

I sit on the bed. I hadn’t actually
expected him to lay the truth on me. “Then why do you keep fighting?” I ask,
which I know is a dumb question. Tarren’s only going to give me some recycled
BS about fighting the good fight, doing the right thing, all valiant martyr.

He surprises me again. “I’ve been
wrong before,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to appraise him.
Perhaps it’s time I stop trying to read Tarren’s thoughts and just listen to
the words he says.

“Maybe you’re wrong about me too.”
I look down at my gloved hands. “Maybe I’m different from the other angels.”

“I hope so,” Tarren says. It isn’t
much, but for Tarren this is progress. It’s going to be a long haul with him,
and I wonder if I have the stamina for it; if Tarren’s even worth the trouble.
I think about the shy smiles he very occasionally cracks, how his face can
soften at odd moments when he thinks no one’s looking, how he closed the eyes
of that dead boy in the barn.

“I want to start fighting,” I tell
him as forcefully as I can. “Really fighting.” I know I’m going to run out of
steam in another minute, turn back into my normal puddle of terrified, but for
now I go with the momentum.

“You will, Maya, if that’s what you
really want.”

“It is.”

Tarren nods. We have an understanding.
I turn to go back to my room.

“Maya,” Tarren calls after me. I
look back at him. Sometimes I forget how handsome he is and it hits me all at
once. “You did good tonight,” Tarren says.

“Thanks,” I huff, trying to pretend
like I don’t really care.

Maybe. Maybe he’s worth the effort.