Frail (10 page)

There was such sadness in her eyes, flooding them like a sudden tide overwhelming the sands. I tensed up, my skin almost itching from a sudden uncomfortable, crawly curiosity: What was it like, what was it really like, to lose yourself to this disease? To lose yourself entirely, for real, to sicken yourself eating and cry in disgust at what you must look like in the cafeteria, classroom, funeral home, to go down in starvation-wracked delirium and come back to yourself lying in a rigid, unyielding carapace that looked like you, but would never be you, ever. No way to smash through the shell, no way out. Did it actually hurt? How could she stand it? But that wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask someone, at least not someone who could snap your neck as an afterthought.

“If I go to Elbertsville,” I tried to explain, “something bad will happen.”

“Amy, it won’t always be as bad as this. It won’t. I swear.”

No, I believe you. It won’t. It’ll be worse.

“You didn’t get through the whole winter on peaches and ravioli,” Lisa said. “I know you didn’t. You told me you didn’t.”

I shook my head.

“I’ll find us something. Dress it, make a fire. God knows we’ve got enough wood. But you keep the knife for now. It’s your knife.” She hesitated. “You should still come with me. Safer.”

“I’m fine here. I can see any more coming a mile away.” I nodded toward the ruin of the houses. “Especially now.”

She wanted badly to hunt by herself, just to be alone with herself and her hunger. I could feel it. She was twitching in her shoes, the spasmy jolt of muscles aching to stretch out and move. “Those trees over there, down past the—”

“I see them.”

“Don’t go anywhere.” She gave me a suspicious look. “And don’t go digging in this crap, if you hurt yourself I haven’t got any first-aid kit left.”

“You’re the one who looks like a walking mirror ball. I’ll be here. Go.”

She went.

Dave wouldn’t be pleased with me right now. Not at all.
Leave her alone,
Ms. Acosta used to snap at him when he’d nag me about helping set the snares, her bird-fluttery voice trilling even higher with anger in a way that made me want to stifle laughter even as my stomach twisted watching them fight.
We spent six hours today foraging for more insulin for you, six goddamned hours, if that’s not “pulling her weight” in your fantasy kingdom then you can just go to—

They shouted, and Kristin screamed, and Dave screamed right back and slammed fists against his own living room wall so hard he drew blood. Diabetics don’t heal. Ms. Acosta drew me aside later and said, Amy, you have to understand. His wife, his daughter. And I thought, there’s nothing I can do about that, nothing at all, but I just nodded.
Six hours,
she kept saying.
Does he understand anything? And Kristin, she’s got to pull herself together, I know she’s sick but she can’t just lie there waiting to die, Amy, talk to her, try to, she listens to you—

What did she want from me? There was nothing I could do about Kristin, nothing at all. And the one thing I promised her, the thing that kept her going, I went and—stillborn. Dead at its first breath. There was nothing I could do for it. Nothing at all.

My skin was damp with sweat though it kept getting colder; I raised my arms up in the too large, floppy-sleeved jacket, letting the air whoosh through the fabric of my T-shirt, and then I heard it: a small, muffled, insistent sound, inside my front jeans pocket. “The Last Transit.” Those opening guitars, sprightly and melancholy and tentative all at once. My cell phone.

My dead cell phone. I hadn’t imagined it. It rang again and I scrabbled frantically to pull it from my pocket, maybe I’d been wrong all this time, the battery was just dormant from the cold or—lighting up, it was all lit up but no number came up, just ringing, it didn’t stop—

“Hello!” I shouted. My voice was heated and shaky. “Hello!”

No answer. Not even the sound of breathing. Just flat, airy silence and no one could have called me, there was no way but it was all still lit up, I heard it ring, I imagined nothing. “Is anyone there? Can you hear me? Is anyone—”

The screen light sputtered and faded out. I cradled it in my hands, pushed every button on and off; it just lay there, warm and stone-smooth in my palm, a useless chunk of sparkly purple plastic.

I shook the phone, pressed star-six-nine. So what if it were crazy? Who’s watching but some squirrels? Nothing. No noise, no light.

I’d be ready. Next time, I’d answer it quicker, on the very first ring, I’d be ready and they wouldn’t hang up. There’d be a next time. I knew there would be. Because this couldn’t be me, huddled up mud-soaked in the remains of another destroyed subdivision in the dozenth destroyed town, waiting for a monster to feed me like a baby bird and then abandon me to strangers who’d die all around me when the winter came, all over again. They’d find me, the stranger on the phone line, wherever they were. They’d help me. I knew, without having to call any tribunals in my head, that they were on my side. They’d know what to do about the dog too. I was sure of it. All I had to do now was wait.

Lisa was walking back with something limp and furry and dead dangling from each hand, and I slipped my secret back into my pocket. I was surprised somehow that she wasn’t lolloping along on all fours with the dead things gripped in her bloody mouth and I was ashamed of myself for those thoughts, after Lisa fed me and prayed over my body and saved my life outright twice in two days. But she’d understand, I knew she’d understand. Why’d she ever have left them behind, her own family, if she didn’t?

We had rabbit for dinner that night, roasted. I don’t know what else Lisa ate in the woods, by herself.

 

 

“How’s your arm?” Lisa asked. The rain was coming down again in long thin streams, trickles of pure cold damp making me shiver and twitch as they rolled from my jacket collar down my back, but neither of us wanted to stop walking. Clearly no good ever came of rest or sleep.

“It’s all right,” I said. It still ached, all the way down to the wrist like something was sinking in dozens of fingernails. My palms felt less raw but were starting to itch, which my mom always said meant the skin was healing. “You were right. Let it bleed.”

She glanced at me, then the sky, as our strip of expressway wound past a used-car lot shiny with smashed metal and glass. Nighttime was closing in again and Lisa looked pinched with exhaustion, head bowed and sodden withes of hair plastered over her face, but I had that dangerous sleep-deprived second wind where everything’s louder, sharper, more colorful: I could walk forever, march right past Elbertsville until I found another empty movie theater, all cool and dark with a concession counter still half intact. Wish Lisa luck at Prairie Beach, sleep on more thin flowered utility carpet until the popcorn was down to the last half-exploded kernel and the rats, the black dog, closed in. Until my secret caller found me, and helped me. I kept taking the phone out to check, I couldn’t help it, but the call screen looked just like the sky, dull dim gray that wouldn’t light up for trying.

“I bet it rains all night,” I said, grabbing a handful of hair and squeezing more water all over my sleeve. “We could stop in one of those cars, or a tollbooth. If you’re tired.”

“Just another mile or two,” she promised. A squirrel snakedanced across the road and something in her started for a moment, drawing up all tight and eager, then subsided. “Then we’ll wring ourselves out.”

“Whatever you say.”

It wasn’t sarcastic but she whipped her head round, glaring at me like I was trying to start a fight, and I just squeegeed more rain from my hair and pretended not to notice. The sky was a deep slate diminishing to black, the soft rushing sounds of the downpour nothing but an amplified silence all around us. My tangerine canvas sneakers had gone blood orange from the puddles, my feet would never stop itching once they were dry again, if they ever were dry again—

A sound at my back, a soft
clomp, clomp
noise like someone stumbling slowly along in shoes far too large. It teased my ear, an itch of noise growing louder and more persistent beneath the wash of water, and I grabbed for Lisa’s hand; she stopped in her tracks like she already knew why.

“Behind us,” I said. Softly as I could, like something might overhear. “Do you hear it?”

She shook her head. “Count of three,” she said, just as softly.

One, two—we both turned around, quick, sharp. Nothing. We kept walking. No more noises.

“Another squirrel,” I said, under my breath to myself, brushing streams of water from my face. A deer. A possum. They’re heavy-footed things, possums, besides being ugly as hell. Lisa kept hold of my fingers, gently as she could manage, swinging her arm idly like we were having a happy little romp through the puddles.

Clomp. Clomp.

I whipped my head over my shoulder ever so casual, just checking the perimeter, and there following in our footsteps was a tiny, upright skeleton in winter coat and hat and mittens and knitted snowflake scarf and miniature bright red boots. It stumbled as it walked, clomping in the boots, like a living toddler just learning how to find its feet; empty sockets like black-tarnished coins stared up at me, a flesh-stripped little jaw grinned at me, when my eyes met the remnants of its face and couldn’t stop staring it stumbled faster, nearly fell, held out its puffy chrysalis arms for me to pick it up. Its bit of a jaw opened wide, and it made a sound. A sound like a whimpering, wounded dog.

My fingers closed around Lisa’s and I jerked us both to a stop; she spun on her heel looking where I looked and then shook her head. She saw nothing. It opened its jaws again and whined louder, a stray’s furious
arrouuuu
of uncomprehending, starving loneliness. Louder, yelping piteously like an animal in pain. Like the dog Lisa hurt to save me.

I was so tired that every cry, every noise was magnified and it was like being in a dream, like when I was asleep before the tornado hit and didn’t even realize what my brain was inventing right before me. No dream, though, not now. No dream. I stretched out my arms.

“Amy?” Lisa was frowning in confusion, the beginnings of fear but she sounded so calm, contained, like she could will us both not to fly apart. “What are you looking at?”

Stumbling toward me now, slowly. Crying harder, like a living baby.

“Amy!” She grabbed my arm, forgetting to be gentle. “I’m not joking! What are you looking at!”

Go away now, Lisa. It doesn’t concern you, what I’m seeing. It never did.

The baby, the dead thing, took another step, inside its rotting stuffed-cloth shell, and then finger bones became claws and something in the shape of a huge black dog flew at me, its yellow lamplight eyes and filthy white teeth gleaming in malice, starvation, murder. It knocked me to the pavement, out of Lisa’s grasp, and no mere ghost had that weight, that power; it growled deep and low against my face like the rumbling of another storm and I kicked, furious, screaming.

Lisa struck out shouting at what I knew she couldn’t see or hear and her hands passed right through the dog’s body, all that solid muscle and skin-soaked fur was nothing to her but an armful of dead air. She grabbed my forearms to haul me up, grabbed me too hard and I screamed again, it was agony, her fingers were vises twisting down to break my bones; the black dog howled in frustrated fury, sank teeth into her arm that never even pricked the skin, and I was up again running in blind panic down the road, back where we’d come from, down and down all the way back to Lepingville where I’d die, where I should long since have died—

“Amy!”
Lisa was screaming. “Oh, Christ! Stop!”

Blinding sulfur-yellow light flooded the sky, the ground from nowhere and there was a hard screeching noise that went on forever, searing the asphalt, a stench of burnt rubber and gasoline—my palms hit smooth, rain-slicked metal and I crumpled to the pavement, out of breath, curled up unhurt and disbelieving against the hard, thick prune skin of a car tire. Headlights, that searing yellow glow. Squealing brakes. An actual working car, barreling the wrong way up the exit ramp and down the middle of an empty expressway and now someone was climbing out of the backseat, coming toward me as I edged away. Tall, thin-faced, a neatly clipped head of thick gray hair, wrapped in a capacious oilskin raincoat with a faded yellow logo splotching one arm.

“Well, hey there!” he said, stretching out a hand, all bouncy, brisk footsteps and crocodile smiles even as his eyes looked me up and down, down and up, like something too distasteful for words. Like some little rodent from the woods, that runs in front of your car. “You need to be more careful than that, Janey almost hit you!”

JUH-uhhhh-aaannEEEEE! all
must
HIIT-T-TCHAA! I knew it. Your people, Lisa, your lost tribe, you handle this. Lisa had come up behind me, circling and protective, rubbing through my jacket sleeves like an apology at the bruises she’d left on my arms.

“I’m Don, by the way,” the man said. Smiling, still smiling, in a way I didn’t like. “What’s your name?”

I shook my head, trying to look stern, disdainful; let Lisa talk for both of us, maybe he’d think I was one of them too. No chance of that, my hand was bleeding from where it scraped the asphalt and I’d seen his eyes flicker to it and then back to my face, he saw how it didn’t heal. At least his car scared my dog away, it was nowhere in sound or sight. The woman behind the wheel had a tidy blonde pageboy and bright red lipstick, like an actress from some old fifties movie, scarlet mouth curved up pondering some private joke I knew I didn’t want to hear.

“I asked you a question,” Don said, and stopped smiling. Raindrops rolled down his oilskin like little waterbugs sailing the surface of a river. “Didn’t I.”

“Leave it,” Lisa said. “We’re both tired. We’ve been walking all day.”

“Wonderful exercise,” he said. “Can’t beat it. You going somewhere?”