Chapter Twelve
If I only had more time to be sure. What am I screwing with here? Pinched the field for almost three seconds this morning. I could feel it bunching up, the heat of it on my hands. Warm, pleasant. Invigorating. This is crazy—I’m crazy! I’m not a scientist anymore, I’m a witch doctor, painted red and shaking rattles at the back of a cave. Except… it works. [Lab Notes, 9/4/04]
In a disused kitchen full of dust and spiders Nilla tripped over a fat woman whose legs had been gnawed down to splayed fragments of bone. The corpse kept trying to get up, to pull herself up to a standing position by grabbing at a table above her. She would get a few inches off the ground and then fall back again with a sputtering creak, only to try again, and again.
Nilla picked up an institutional-sized can of beets and bashed the dead woman’s head in. Then she sat down on the floor next to the twice-dead corpse and tried to think of what to do next.
She felt tired, so tired. At least part of that had to do with the light. The emergency lights in the prison were everywhere and they were bright enough to let you see where the doors and exits were. The light came at weird angles, though, and it was dim enough that as you approached someone in the halls they looked like nothing more than a dull shadow. It was impossible to know if they were alive or dead.
Nilla. Nilla, speak with me. I can get you out of here if you’ll speak with me.
Mael’s voice had softened. Once his intrusions into her head had been buzzing, clattering torrents of noise. Now they almost sounded like her own thoughts. It was hard to resist him, harder than it had ever been before. He was figuring her out, learning her buttons, her triggers. He was going deep, inside of her mind, and she wasn’t sure she could extract him anymore without hurting herself in the process.
And was that such a bad thing? She had to wonder. She was pretty sure he was crazy, but at least in the middle of his insanity there was a place for her.
Why do you hide from me, lass? I thought we were finally getting on alright. Just say something, will you? Say something so I can figure out where you are. Then I can get you to safety.
She kept her mouth shut. She just wasn’t sure, yet. There was so much of her, so much she couldn’t see. There had been a complete human being, somebody with a personality all her own, with likes and dislikes and beliefs and attitudes and, and, and… memories. There had been memories and now they were hidden from her. That person had just stopped. When she died, that person had stopped functioning. Those memories had been barred from her, hidden behind a wall she couldn’t seem to break down.
Were those things lost forever? Would she ever get her memories back? Mael promised her a name. He had implied there was more. She knew better than to trust him completely, though. For all she knew he had nothing and whatever name he gave her would just be made up. Imaginary.
Lass. Don’t you know I’m your friend? Don’t you know it by now? I’ve done so much for you. Is this how you repay me?
Jason Singletary could have told her the truth, but he was dead now. Twice dead. She and Dick had devoured his body between them. It was the closest thing to mercy that she had possessed to give him.
She thought maybe that she had started over. That dying had relieved her of the burden of having a past. Or maybe it gave her a duty—a duty to rebuild her humanity.
Maybe she had been brought back for a reason, but not for Mael’s reason. Jason Singletary had certainly thought so. She was the only one, he’d said, who could go to that place. That place in the mountains, that place at the end of the world.
The place Captain Clark had shown her, in a photograph.
She stood up slowly and dusted off her pants. She left the kitchen. She took the next left turn just because she recalled that when you were lost in a maze you were supposed to take every left turn. That much she could remember.
The corridor beyond was long and dark and cold. At its far end she saw a rectangle of pale light. She moved toward it. She was drawn toward it. “I’m here, Mael,” she said out loud. Because she owed him that much. “I’m going to find my own way for now, though, if you don’t mind.”
Nilla—finally! I’d thought you must be dead. Well, I blasted well do mind, actually. We have things to do. Turn right at the next junction. That’s an order, lass.
“I’ve been thinking,” Nilla said. “I’ve seen what your dead people do to the living people. It looks pretty cruel to me. It looks pretty… unnecessary. If he just wanted to kill them all off, why didn’t your pal Teuagh just melt the ice caps or set off all the nukes or whatever? Why raise the dead? It’s so messy, so… inefficient. Are you telling me he couldn’t think of anything better?”
I don’t question his ways.
“Which just means you don’t know.”
Mael’s voice returned a little louder, a little harsher. She had gotten to him, she decided. If only just a little. That was a kind of victory in itself. If you’re going to tell me now that you don’t believe in the father of clans, I wish you would just save your breath.
“It’s not like I’m going to need it for anything else. Mael, I need some time to think. Some space. I want you to know, it’s not you. It’s me.”
His reply smacked into her ribs hard enough to make her squeak in surprise and pain. Something—something dead had come at her hard and fast. It wasn’t Dick: it had arms, arms that wrapped around her waist hard, unfeeling arms that would crush her if she didn’t do something.
Nilla did something.
Twisting to her side she dropped to the floor like a bag of flour, slipping down through the ring of those crushing arms. At the same time she kicked out with one leg, crushing a kneecap with the heel of her shoe. Unfeeling, the dead thing came at her again, surging through the darkness, enormous and stinking and ragged, torn and ravaged muscles convulsing, striking, descending to smash her to pieces.
Nilla reached up, felt hair, and grabbed. The dead thing swiveled and scratched and struck at the air but Nilla held it away from herself and avoided the worst of its attack. Heaving and grunting she hauled the dead creature toward the doorway, toward the light. She had to be fast and she pushed her muscles to obey her, to give her some kind of coordination as she pulled on the dead thing’s blood-matted hair. As she got its head under her armpit. As she heaved one more time and shattered its skull against the doorframe.
The dead thing collapsed like a bag full of meat. Nilla dropped it and stepped into the light, her body screaming at her, every muscle in her arms and back wrenched by the exertion. Then she looked down at the thing she’d killed.
Shar looked back up at her.
It was her, it was definitely her. How she had died, Nilla had no clue. It really didn’t matter. She had died and come back and Mael had been clever enough to make her one of his puppets. Nilla pressed one knuckle against her upper lip, trying not to vomit. When she stopped shaking she looked at the ceiling. As if he were there, somewhere, in the sky. The way someone else might have looked up to talk to God.
“This is it, then. It’s all you have to offer. Dead things struggling in the dark. Hurting each other. Fuck it, I’m done.”
He didn’t speak to her again. Maybe he knew better, or maybe she’d switched off whatever part of her brain listened to him. Beyond the doorway stood a stairwell that lead upward. At its top a door opened onto black air. When Nilla’s eyes finally adjusted she saw stars. Clouds. The night sky. To her left a pulsing heartbeat, a throbbing pulse of noise. She looked over and saw the spinning blades of a helicopter.
