Swarm (36 page)

At the pond, our faces rippled across the water's surface. Copper pennies shimmered on the reflections of our lips. A stone smashed through the roof, then another, their shapes pounding into the soil around us, the glass a weird sparkling rain. We hunched over and ran and when we reached the back door, Walter was there. “I knew you'd pussy out,” he said to Marvin. I turned around, but Marvin looked only at Walter. I felt tired: one more lie, piled on the rest.

But Marvin defended himself. “These people are on our side,” he said, his arm sweeping backward to the blur through the windows. “They want what we—”

“All they want is an easy life.”

“So we kill them?” Phoenix asked.

Walter turned to her, as if he'd just noticed she was there.

“Your highness,” he said and pretended to curtsy. His lips stretched into a sneer that suddenly vanished so he was glaring at all of us. He taunted us when he spoke, like a cruel teacher explaining elemental things to confused students.

“This is metamorphosis. The old is destroyed to make way for the new. You don't pick and choose.”

None of us knew what to say.

“It's simple. You don't have the balls for what has to be done.” He stepped closer to Phoenix, his voice vicious. “You're alone. You only care about yourself.”

I was afraid. I could see how far gone he was; how his pupils had turned into fat black stones.

“Walter,” Phoenix said and lifted her hands as if to show him that they were empty.

“Passive resistance,” Walter mocked as he slung his backpack around and unzipped it. I could barely breathe as we waited to see what he'd pull out. A plastic water bottle. Insanely, I felt relief, thinking he was just thirsty. But then he screwed it open with his good hand and flicked it toward Phoenix. The liquid splattered at her feet.

Gasoline. Behind me, Marvin lifted his hands like a conductor about to cue the show. “What the fuck are you—”

Walter interrupted. “You get the last word, buddy. E-mail's set to go at midnight. Signed and sealed with all our names.” Like a wizard's wand, his metal hand swept over all of us, stopping at Phoenix. “Even yours, although you don't fucking deserve it.”

He didn't move right away. He stood there, the point of a triangle, Phoenix and Marvin each a corner of its base. Me, an incidental object, detached. All of us uncertain what was happening so we were surprised when Walter upended the bottle over himself, drenching his shirt and pants, the liquid darkening the colour of his clothing. Simple clothes. A pair of khaki pants, a faded red polo shirt. The vapours stung my eyes and sent sharp pains darting through my head. I tried to speak, but all I could say was what the others had begun shouting—
No, Don't, Stop
—a rush of urgent denial even as Walter bowed his head almost elegantly and ignited himself, turning rapidly into a flaming pillar that flew toward the front window and crashed through the glass.

Outside, the crowd slumped into silence. Like a weapon, he quieted them. Then he started to scream. I remember that, with a horror I can't describe, can't put words to, won't.

Marvin followed Walter. He jumped through the window's jagged hole and then reached back for me. I stepped over the ragged edge of glass on the sill. Phoenix was slower, her eyes scanning the crowd outside with Walter on its edge. Spinning flames. She seemed frozen, hugging herself with both arms.

“Come on,” Marvin shouted at me, and I reached back for her. I put my arm through the empty window, bunched the sleeve of her shirt in my fist, and hauled her out of the jungle. She stumbled on the sharp edge, straddled it. I heard her cry out, but I assumed it was fear and I pulled her harder, doing what I thought was right. Trying to get her to safety.

We shoved through the circling crowd. No one knew what to do. As we left, I saw the mass split open, police breaking through, riot shields drawn up to push Walter to the ground. But then we were gone, slipping into the dark streets. The snow cold and blunt against our bare skin. Whenever I moved my head, glass fell from my hair, made a tinkling sound in my ears. I looked at my hand and my fingers were red. Phoenix leaned crookedly as we ran. We headed south, toward the dark zone, that block of blackness where we knew we could hide. I saw the broken yellow pawnshop sign.
THE SALVATION ARMY SHELTER.
The soot-black travel agency, its insides dug out. The street smelled of wet ash and garbage. My throat burned from running. Strangely bent, Phoenix hung between Marvin and me. She grabbed at our elbows, shoulders, upper arms, like a climber looking for a handhold.

“I'm all right,” she kept saying as we tried to keep moving, even thought we weren't asking. We could still hear the sounds of the protest behind us, shouts and screams and glass breaking. People ran by us, their feet slapping down the centre of the street. Phoenix was too slow so Marvin stopped and like a fireman, he slung her over his shoulder as if he'd pulled her from a burning building. Blood ran down her leg. Coming quickly, coming so fast.

“Wait,” I said as I looked back and saw the trail of it, fat, red spots marking our escape. “Put her down.” My voice shrill, scared, but he ignored me and we moved under the overpass, across the clearing, until we reached the chain-link fence. Smoke trickled out of the barrel, but the fire had gone out.

Beside the overturned steel sink, Marvin laid her on the ground.

“Phoenix,” I said. Over and over.

As I'd seen on
TV
, I asked her questions: how many fingers am I holding up, do you know where you are, what's your name, what's your real name, where were you born. She didn't answer them. She struggled to sit up, pulling at the clothing around her waist, her fingers fumbling on the button of her jeans. Marvin laid his hand on her chest to push her down. I could tell she wanted to look, to see what had happened, so I tugged up on her long black sweater. Marvin fished his cigarette tin out of his pocket and tried to light a match. His hands were shaking. The third one took and we saw. We saw.

A shard of glass stuck through her pants, into her upper thigh. Not large, maybe the size of a pencil worn to a usable stub. Marvin reached for it.

“Don't,” I said, lifting one hand to stop him but I couldn't. Like a stinger, it came out easily. Then, black like oil, the widest tide of blood.

I bent over her, held on, my arms around her shoulders. She pushed me back and then lifted her hand to awkwardly touch my face. There was blood over everything so her finger slipped into my wet nostril and we actually giggled before I spoke, sobbing, saying only her name and
I love you
.
I love you. I love you.
The words in my mouth like a last hard sliver of candy, about to disappear.

“Oh,
Jesus Christ,” Thomson said as Marvin and I carried her inside. My hand was under the hem of her sweater, sliding on the blood-wet skin of her waist. We laid her on the mattress. Thomson stared at her, covered his face with his hands, lowered them. Turned away, turned back, as reality grabbed hold.

I didn't notice when Marvin left but some time later, an hour, maybe less, maybe more, he blasted through the front door. Our heads swivelled his way. I stifled a laugh. Hysterical.

He went into the kitchen and came back carrying his backpack. “Sandy,” he said. “Sandy.” His eyes wouldn't look at Phoenix. Thomson stared at him. “We have to go.”

Phoenix was laid out, her hands layered on her belly, set there by Thomson. He sat beside her, his palm cupping her fingers' hard bones.

“No,” he said.

“Sandy,” Marvin said. “Get up.”

I didn't move. I sat cross-legged at the end of the other mattress, my gaze glued to Phoenix, as if magnetized. Thomson kept talking to her, telling her good things, guiding her spirit to whatever came next, when all I could do was cry and cry.

“Thomson,” Marvin said. “Thomson.”

Thomson stopped talking. After a moment, he looked at Marvin.

“Do you want this for Sandy? Or for me? As soon as Walter's e-mail goes . . .”

“I don't care what happens to you,” Thomson said.

Marvin flinched. A brief hardening of his face. He gestured to me. “Well, what about her?”

Thomson glanced at me. My face a blotchy mess, eyes blunted from what I'd seen. I made a noise in my throat that was supposed to be words but didn't sound like anything.

“We have to go,” Marvin said, rattling the map in his hand.

I
gathered some things—Phoenix's scarves, her lavender oil, a few books. All shoved in Marvin's backpack. We took the wind-up flashlight, blankets, and what food we could find: plastic bags of cumin and cayenne stolen from the restaurants where Phoenix had once worked, lentils, dented cans of ham. Thomson wanted to bring Phoenix's body with us, but Marvin said no. Before we left, he set fire to the patchwork on the walls, the edge of the Jump Ship map, but it didn't take, kept extinguishing into acrid smoke. In the end we left her there, like something too expensive to keep.

We used money from Marvin's mother to fill the gas tank of the stolen car. For hours, we drove north. On that journey, Marvin hardened up, cast in his seat like bronze.

Thomson sat up front, bent forward, the seat belt wrapped twice around his still-bloodied hand. From behind, I laid my hands on his shoulders, rested the side of my face on the seat back, held in my own sorrow. The three of us were silent for a long, long time.

After a while, we reached a place of absolute darkness. The only light came from the car, pointing into a tunnel of snow.

Thomson navigated, following the flashlight's yellow circle on the map I'd taken from Walter's old apartment. He gave Marvin instructions. At the turn-off to the island, Thomson pointed left and Marvin swung onto the narrow street and the car slid over a patch of ice. He pumped the brakes until we came to a stop, sideways on the empty road.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, and all Thomson said was “Go.”

We
wove through strange white mountains lit by the first pink of dawn. The forest on either side so thick it looked like walls. The car scraped over frost heaves and lurched through potholes and any town we went through seemed empty. Thomson turned to check on me in the back seat. I was holding on to Phoenix's red headscarf, the one printed with skulls and cobwebs, wet with tears I couldn't remember crying. He reached back and squeezed my arm with his thin fingers, a grip so hard it hurt.

We drove for hours more. Until we reached the other end of the island, until we found the lighthouse, until we couldn't go any farther unless we dropped off the limestone cliff, into the deep, cold lake. The water was silver in the daylight, shiny as a skyscraper. I had never seen such a beautiful place. So beautiful that even in the midst of all that pain, I felt it take my breath away and stir my shattered heart.

That is the
story, laid bare to you, Melissa. My own. Who I was and who I am. You, I have realized, never existed except as a shallow trough in the earth, a footprint that started this journey. I kicked it in. Obliterated the toe-marks, the heel. A burial.

Of course, there was grief in that for me. A letting-go. A new understanding of aloneness. But then Marvin called out for me, at the lighthouse, that night. He gestured with his bloody fingers to Samuel's hand shakily manning the flashlight. I left the girl and the baby and steadied the trembling beam by wrapping my hand around the boy's wrist, holding it still.

“Don't look,” I whispered to him while Marvin pierced his father's skin with the curved needle, running the black thread through.

Melissa was the girl I thought I was feeding. The phantom.

But the one who exists, who I saw in the cave, flesh and fiery blood, gave me her name that night, in the lighthouse.

“I'm Abby.”

She watched. Standing in the doorway, awkwardly moving her baby sister from one skinny hip to the other. Her gaze followed Marvin's fingers and occasionally jumped up to her father's face. Jack bit down on a towel. The fingers of his right hand dug into the dirt.

Eric and Graham drifted off to the steep edge of the shore. They stared at the black nothing of the lake, stretching out into the rest of a world that they would probably never see. Abby had seen some of it. I wondered what had happened to her after she'd left the island, a sleeping, sick toddler carried by her mother. Where had she gone? I thought of her in that cave, the dead woman decaying in the heat, and I realized that must have been Mona. Mona, my old friend. Abby's mom. “Hold it steady,” Marvin said, and all eyes looked at me as I blinked back tears.

We
stayed at the lighthouse that night. Jack couldn't walk so Marvin and the boys and I carried him inside. We laid him on the kitchen floor, and Marvin gave him one of the precious penicillin pills from the first aid kit. Abby pulled a blanket off the bed upstairs and folded a sweater for him to use as a pillow. She lay there with him while the boys watched her. As the night deepened, Eric and Graham gathered closer to their stranger sister. By dawn they were sleeping in a clump, like kittens.

I didn't sleep. I stayed outside with Shannon. She had refused to go in. Not with any words but only by lying there, like a slab of soundless rock, millions of years old. In the yard, I watched the bats swoop around us. When it got late and they slid into their hollows, I looked at the reflections of stars in the waves. My mind kept turning to you and then remembering and then seeing the emptiness that was there. I thought of Thomson and Phoenix. I thought of the travel agent and wondered who she'd left behind, what lives I'd played my part in damaging. More tears dropped on the knot of my hands. As if on a widow's walk, I stared out at the water although I felt I wasn't searching anymore.

Dawn
came, deep streaks of red in the east. The eight of us started walking home. Shannon trailed behind like a squid's defensive ink. The boys and Abby closed around Jack. Marvin carried the gun. At the laneway to their farm we all stopped, except for Shannon, who rushed by and went into their house. The baby sputtered in Eric's arms.