And in the Dark They Are Born, Part 8
"STICK TO SHADOWS."
CHAPTER 11
VITRI IS FLYING—no, no, he isn’t flying, but he isn’t walking, isn’t jumping, isn’t running; he is seated but still soaring through the sky—ascending, knifing through clouds. He is atop something, some soundless creature he, because he can feel its flaps, knows to have wings. He lets his arms dangle, lets his fingers wander the creature’s dry skin—there are no feathers; scales; stubble. He swivels his head. Tries to see through the clouds, through the extending fog. It troubles him that there is no scent on the air. Only a sound, a hummed melody, a
and as much as he strains to listen, as much as he strains to see, there is nothing, no source,
doo-doo-daahhh-dah-doo-doo-daahhh-dah,
a woman’s voice, a raspy voice, a weakening voice, siphoned from the sky, plummeting to panic, to what lies beneath, vaulting him to reach, to itch, to gasp. And then the creature is no more, and he is falling. Falling after the voice, falling, falling, falling straight down, slow at first but accelerating past the fog, into darkness, until he, without so much as a surface ripple, is underwater, on his back, staring at a refracted moon, bloated, bright, and chambered in by thin strands of stars swinging like holiday lights in a crosswind. When he tries to roll himself into swimming position, he plunges further beneath the surface—one meter, two meters, three, that panic returning in the form of a scream, voice distorted by the water, by the soaked scarf that has untied itself, and is now stretched over his face, yanking him
muddied by the water, and deeper now, a new voice, a voice he has never heard,
and over him floats a rusted tricycle with white handlebars, over him floats a crumpled flashcard, over him floats his son, his dead grey feet, his legs—snug in his pinstriped pajama bottoms—then his torso, his water-shriveled face. Blood seeps from the his son’s ears and spins counter-clockwise, strands of red dissipating with the wake Vitri creates with his clawing hands. But then his son is gone, past, and Vitri keeps moving, because he cannot stop, and he keeps on clawing, he keeps on reaching, because it’s the only thing he knows how to do. And then, like that, his hands are granted control of the moon, of the stars, and, before he is aware of the power he wields, he wrenches them into the water until he is shrouded in white light,
and over him floats an upside-down frying pan, over him floats a pair of black flats, a yellow sundress, over him are suds, lilac-scented suds funneling toward him as if he were a drain, lilac-scented suds outlining ten toes, dripping from a woman’s smooth calves, a woman’s thin thighs,
and he stops reaching, stops clawing, stops moving altogether. Gives up. And then he is lifted. Toward the surface, toward the moon and the stars, toward the woman, her groin, her torso, her breasts, her neck—
From the metal trashcan, Reyn watches Vitri’s hand twitch. Asleep, he looks so much like a child, so serene, so at ease, and adorable, legs curled, cuddled against the west wall, drooling on the cap end of his water bottle pillow, his body a respiring mound in the far reaches of the candle’s glow. She feels as if she could watch him like this for hours.
Leaving the lit candle by the trashcan, Reyn tiptoes to the door, where she has set the briefcase and their zipped backpacks. She hopes that Vitri will appreciate that upon awakening, her effort, how much time she has saved by packing for the both of them. She wants him to nod, to smile. To wrap his arms around her and squeeze, and hold, and hold, and hold. For now, though, she’s in search of something. She unzips the largest pocket of Vitri’s backpack and, in doing so, causes Vitri to stir. She extracts an unlit candle only when he has settled, then, careful of the noise she know she must be making, she slowly unzips her own backpack and wrests out Ralph’s sickle. Items in hand, she returns to the trashcan. Sits cross-legged on the floor, facing Vitri, the only man besides her father to have ever kissed her.
She knows how childish it is to think anything of it, to place weight on something that, in the moment, could be viewed by most as trivial. The man was scared. The man was angry. The man was lost. And Reyn was just the person that happened to be there. Nothing more than within reach. A band-aid. That’s all. No man dreams of band-aids, of anything to mend a wound they’d never admit to having, a wound they’d rather ignore. Hours from now—when they are to walk south in silence—she knows he’ll do everything he can to rid his mind of the fourth floor, her included, her especially; Reyn, whose disability had set the whole thing in motion.
Feeling so certain of such makes it no easier for Reyn to accept that, for the hours he has been asleep, all she has wanted to do is reciprocate. Kiss him on the forehead. On each cheek. Moments ago, she even lowered herself enough for her breath to move his hair, so close that she could smell the dried tomato soup on his upper lip. What stopped her, what brought her here, behind the garbage can, had been anxiety. Her stomach had spun. Her pulse had risen. Her mind had darted to an image of Vitri waking, of Vitri reaching up, of Vitri choking her. She pictured Vitri, so embarrassed, so ashamed, so clueless as to how she operated, letting go of his hold, prepping her for what she would assume was their trek to Florida, and then trading her to the masked. For a weapon. For a vehicle. For a masked woman with the body of Painter White, a specialist in the field of wounds.
Reyn straightens the unlit candle’s crooked wick, then tilts it to the flame of its lit counterpart. Once the new candle holds the flame, she sets it on the floor. Brings the old candle close. Examines the layer of melted wax atop, the black burn marks across the glass, their turbulent smudges and slashes—high, low, thick, thin, jagged, rounded. Before blowing out the flame, Reyn hovers her nose over the candle’s rim and takes one deep breath. Almonds. Warm. Welcoming. She imagines them in a small house, one burning on a coffee table during game night, another on a nightstand overlooking a set of ruffled covers. Pillars, she thinks. A home. That’s what these are.
As the wax cools, Reyn, like the man that gashed her tongue, grips the back of Ralph’s sickle, clambers her fingers up-up-up until only an inch or two of the half-moon blade is visible, dried blood flaking onto her fingers. She then eases the blade into the wax.
After setting her work on the floor, Reyn peels the clotted wax from the tip of Ralph’s sickle, balls it with her fingers and places it in the shallow pool of wax forming in the other candle. She then rises and tiptoes to her backpack. Into the large pocket goes the sickle. Between it and DEEP THROAT she places R+V, but not before shoving it into a stray wool sock. There it will harden, and, she hopes, endure. Because, even if Vitri wants to forget, this, it, she and him, she wants it all to be remembered. He saved her. He healed her. He protected her. Kissed her.
Forcing these facts to vanish, she feels, would be tragic.
Reyn zips the pockets of each backpack and out of the corner of her eye sees a water bottle rolling across the floor. Vitri is awake, sitting up, eyes wide and searching, uncertain of his surroundings but becoming acclimated once more. Reyn, carrying a pen and the notebook, walks toward Vitri. But Vitri jumps to his feet. He hurries to the window and yanks the quilt aside. Darkness is lifting, an early morning indigo slipping into its place, the tops of buildings transitioning out of shadow. Vitri lets the quilt swing shut, turns around, stares at Reyn, then raises his arms in question. But all she can focus on is his crotch, on his erection, the bulge of the denim.
TOLD YOU NOT TO LET ME SLEEP
YOU NEEDED IT
Reyn stands behind Vitri as he crouches and examines his backpack. She waits for him to turn before presenting the notebook to him. But he ignores her. Looks past her, around her, scanning for something else to cram, anything she may have forgotten. When he finally notices the notebook, Vitri takes it from her. He jams it into her backpack, zips the large pocket shut, then asks for the pen. Once in his hand, Vitri stands. He grabs Reyn’s arm, rolls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt and crosses out the instructions from before. Writes.
STICK TO SHADOWS
HOLD MY HAND
Heaps of dead birds on Cotton St. Bent beaks, smashed beaks, stray red, blue, and black feathers held in place by the weight of the damp, dank air. There is a dog, too, dozens of feet away, some mutt with one ear batting its weak paws at a plastic bag in front of a ravaged insurance building. Other than that, in the hours that they’ve been on foot, it has seemed to Vitri that the streets of Shreveport belong to he and Reyn, and the cars—cars, cars, cars, tires gone, windows smashed, hoods off, guts out—the crumbling of wood and brick chips beneath their feet one of only a few sounds to be heard.
Vitri quickens their pace. Tugs Reyn’s right hand with him through a portion of Loyola’s campus, adjusting his focus as the sun does, from roofs and windows to sidewalks and intersections, scanning, searching. They move like this through cemeteries and city parks, past medical centers, past museums, past hotels and libraries, past it all and out of the city.
Vitri leans against the QUERBES PARK sign. His clothes are heavy with sweat. His feet ache. Though on the air is a scent of vomit, the park, aside from the tipped garbage cans, is rather clean. Fences are intact. Save for white blotches on their tops the size and shape of watermelons, hedges have remained green. Tree branches are bare, soggy leaves carpeting the yellow grass, the concrete path winding through the park—dark yellow leaves, bright red leaves, semitransparent green. Vitri watches Reyn reach for one from the ground. He grabs her arm.
“No,” he says, then slides the scarf off of his nose. He puts his hands on his hips and scans the area, paying particular attention to a dry water fountain in the center of the park. “Think we’re safe?”
He turns to see her unzipping her backpack. Hair falls into her eyes. She brushes it away, careful not to bump her cheek. The swelling, Vitri assumes, is nearing its peak. In one day, maybe two, it will begin its long slog back to normalcy, dark purple center gone, yellow edges dissolving. It hasn’t slowed her though, as he anticipated it would. Not one bit. She has been step for step with him the entire way, gripping his hand with more strength than he imagined her possessing. And, though her breathing still is somewhat labored, Vitri, having been caught staring at her, spots excitement in her eyes. For being on the move. For being here, in this park. For being with him.
“Oh,” Vitri says to himself, having forgotten for a moment about Reyn’s deafness. “Right.”
The girl, Vitri thinks, does not yet know how to hide her feelings. Resist them. Shove them down. Concentrate them into curling toes. IS NOT THE TIME, he wants to write. HERE IS NOT THE PLACE. But he feels it, in stares such as this, in how sweaty her shy hand had been on the second floor, before dawn, before they descended the staircase. He can even see it in her handwriting now, as she sets the notebook on the surface of the park sign, how, when compared to the first sentences she wrote for him, their rigidity, their lack of both care and strength, she grips the pen as if it were her brush and the letters her paint. So focused. So round, so perfect.
Reyn smiles wide enough that Vitri can see the layers of black on her tongue. All this girl knows is misery, Vitri thinks. He takes the notebook. Looks at Reyn. Nods, then takes off his backpack. He places the notebook within it, and pulls from its side pocket a bottle of water. He offers it to Reyn.
She sips.
He sips.
Their breathing slows.
Vitri looks across the park. He feels Reyn’s gaze upon him, and wishes it was as easy as just swatting it away. He slides the scarf back over his nose, then walks south, this time not bothering to offer a hand.
They come upon NEBEKE’S, an auto dealer just off of what Vitri confirms to be the corner of Southfield and Anniston. Behind the half-filled lot is a twenty-foot high mound of dirt that appears as if, perhaps for some sort of renovation, it had been intentionally placed and shaped by machine. Before walking to it, Vitri tries to signal Reyn, first with the wave of one hand, then with the flailing of both arms. But on she goes, oblivious, toward the south end of the car lot. And up the mound he walks, toes digging into the dirt, lungs labored.
Atop the mound, Vitri’s scarf flaps in the wind. That same scent of vomit is on the air, stronger now that he is higher, the roofs of nearby buildings rotted and appearing as if a single footstep would turn the block to rubble.
He is surprised to see as far as he can. Four miles east, maybe more. Surprised but pleased at what he sees: beyond sequential mounds of dirt like the one he stands upon is a large bridge arching over what he knows to be the Red River, sunlight glaring off its skeleton. The river itself, from this distance, looks nothing like a river at all, but, rather, a crater. A direct drop off from the east and west banks. The faintest trickle at the bottom.
He focuses once more on the bridge, and wonders about the bridges further south. He doesn’t know if they’re wooden, but pictures them as such, their footboards snapped—or, rather, snapping as they cross. He pictures himself trudging through the bottom of the river, backpack held above his head. Pictures himself improvising some sort of raft for Reyn.
We cross now, he thinks.
He looks down on the lot. Nearest to the street is a row of wounded hybrid vehicles that, like the subsequent rows of sedans and SUVs, extend two hundred feet south. He hadn’t noticed it before; couldn’t have so close to the ground—each vehicle’s roof is marked with one red M, some painted by can, others by brush.
Alert, Vitri pulls the 9mm from his waistband and stumbles down the mound, making his way to the middle row once on concrete, searching for Reyn through cracked windshields. Halves of hoods have been sawn off, batteries lifted entirely, pistons and gaskets strewn about, leftover, discarded. The engine of a Sonata is missing, the air filter of an Elantra. And still, no Reyn. Vitri drops to the pavement and looks beneath each sedan. Then, each hybrid, all four tires of every other gone, rolled away. Nothing else. Oil stains. Washers.
Then there is the sound of a dreary car horn. Again.
Vitri stands.
Again.
He scans the lot for the sound. Aims his pistol at nothing in particular.
Another honk, this one quieter, lighter.
Vitri rotates his body toward the sound, toward the back row, the southeast corner of the lot. There, in the driver’s seat of a dented silver Jeep sits Reyn, one hand on the wheel, the other dangling out of the shattered driver’s side window. She waves at Vitri. Even has the audacity to smile.
She was trying to be quiet, Vitri tells himself as he jogs to the Jeep. He pictures two or three red-masked men sprinting from across the street and into the lot, searching with malicious joy for the origin of such noise.
She was trying to be quiet, she was trying to be quiet, she was trying to be quiet.
By the time he reaches the Jeep, Reyn has leaned over and opened the passenger door for him. At first he refuses to get in. Makes a waving motion with the pistol instead that he assumes Reyn will take to mean, WE NEED TO LEAVE. The thought, however, never seems to cross her mind. When she isn’t waving him in, Reyn is pointing at the dashboard.
Vitri surrenders. He quietly shuts the door after climbing onto the passenger’s seat. Once in, he looks all around the Jeep, at the critter-clawed back seat, at the dirt-caked floor, in the glove compartment, the only artifact in the vehicle being its manual. Then he stares as wickedly at Reyn as he can, for as long as he can, a look he hopes will communicate what he feels: YOU’RE FUCKING THIS UP. But the girl isn’t to be broken. She smiles. She points again at the dashboard.
WHY?
NOWHERE ELSE TO GO
LOTS OF PLACES
MOM DIDN’T THINK SO
WHAT DID YOU DO?
SEARCHED. FOOD, WATER, GAS, SYRINGES.
DRIVE US OUT OF HERE, KID?
I COULD
ALWAYS WANTED TO TEACH SOMEONE
KIDS?
NO
NEPHEWS? NIECES?
NO
WIFE?
NO. WE NEED TO
Way east are engines, loud engines, gas engines, small engines, roaring engines, high-pitched, piercing.
Louder now, higher now, louder, higher, nearing NEBEKE’S. Vitri palms Reyn’s head and presses it down, until she, taking the hint, balls herself beneath the dash, ankles hooked around the pedals. Then he too tucks himself, as far as a grown man can, chin in limbo between the glove compartment and seat. He looks at Reyn as she, beneath the steering wheel, somehow turns herself around, eyes now inches from the driver’s seat. Vitri holds his finger to his mouth. BE QUIET.
The engines are closer now, louder. Vitri counts three of them, distinct if he strains to listen, the lead engine sounding like a cross between a moped and a chainsaw, high but snarling when slowing or cornering. The second thumps low like a chopper, one twist of the throttle sounding as if it were grinding asphalt, arcing it behind the vehicle like a waverunner would seawater. Vitri looks at Reyn, who has shoved her arm beneath the seat. Her arm wiggles; metal clangs.
Vitri grips her arm. Points at his scarved face, then to the window, and it seems to be enough to scare her still.
While the sound of the first two engines fade, one lingers, and it hardly sounds like an engine at all to Vitri. It sounds instead as if it is hovering, the sound he’d expect to hear if one were to place industrial sized magnets just feet apart. And it isn’t going away.
“Why we stoppin’?” A boy’s voice over the sound, a pubescent voice, cracking.
A woman’s voice: “How the fuck you expect to drag those reds out them holes from here?”
“We need some juice.” Gruff but somehow neutral, patient. “D’you rather be sittin’ duck in the city?”
The woman, rasp fading: “I’m gonna cut that dick off later if I find out you’re just pissin’. Old as shit man, swear I’ll cut that dick off.” There are three loud clangs then, scrapes, the sound of metal being severed. Twenty feet from the Jeep, thirty at most.
The boy: “Hurry up, Crow.”
Vitri waits for the scraping to stop, then peeks over the Jeep’s dash. Through several windows appears a distorted Crow, elbow deep under the hood of a chardonnay-toned hybrid. He is a shirtless black man in torn, faded-yellow pants and, when he lifts the battery from the car, Vitri can see a yellow mask on his face—a hockey goalie’s mask, with a jagged hole cut around the mouth. Vitri dips his head when Crow turns toward the Jeep. Reyn attempts to rise and, again, Vitri palms her head. Forces her still. Forces her quiet.
When he peeks over the dash again, Crow is walking north, between the hybrids and sedans, toward the woman and the boy, who sit upon what at first glance appears to be a motorcycle—height, shape, the two large wheels. It is sleek. It has been carefully painted bright yellow. The handlebars appear to have been swapped out for an assortment of control sticks and levers. Pedals rise over each footguard. Visible beneath the bike’s frame are car batteries, four of them in all, and lined with yellow lights.
The woman: “You satisfied now?” She sits in the sidecar on the left. The boy sits in the sidecar on the right. Like Crow, both are shirtless and wearing modified yellow hockey masks, some seemingly unified faction, the only glaring difference between the three of them being skin color. Strangely, neither woman nor boy face forward. Both are pointed backwards in their sidecar, assault rifles mounted for their use. Behind them—nearer to the front of the bike—are stationary riot shields bent at sharp angles.
“Yip, sats’fied,” Crow says. He hands the just-removed battery to the boy.
“The fuck m’I supposta do with this?” The battery is larger than his head.
“Make room,” Crow says.
“I got some room over here, honey,” the woman says. She stands, leans over the bike, her breasts swinging in front of the boy’s face. Seconds after she takes the battery, Crow, straddling the bike, accelerates the three of them west, away from the lot, all origins of sound drifting north.
Vitri looks at Reyn and nods, then lifts himself back onto the passenger seat. Upon receiving approval, Reyn plunges her arm back beneath the driver’s seat. Vitri opens his door and steps out onto the lot. Looks east. At fractions of the bridge. At the route he now believes they should give up on. The bridge is no secret; more yellow-masked people could come from the east at any minute.
South it is, he thinks. South we go.
He looks back at the Jeep. Reyn crawls over the center console and passenger seat. Once on her feet, she shows Vitri what she has found: a flashlight, no bigger than her hand. She clicks it on, revealing a white beam dulled by daylight.
Vitri nods. Squints at the street. “That’s nice, Reyn,” he says.
SOUTH, south for hours. Away from distant gunfire, out of the city’s reach, into and across suburbs, past an airport with no planes or cargo, SOUTH, across desiccated creekbeds, where they eventually stop for soup and water, Vitri’s eyes always east, SOUTH, off of the roads, into thinning forests, dried up bayous, even, swamp grass waist-high and feeble, ash beneath footsteps, merged into the grey and brown and yellow, SOUTH, until the sun sets, until night falls, until dew comes.
Vitri watches Reyn jackknife through the brush. Nimble, quick, gripping her backpack’s straps, ducking beneath branches, glancing back every few steps, eyes in the night like two white buttons on a black shirt. She wants him to watch. Wants him to see her take the lead. Wants him to reconsider her.
“Slow down,” he wishes he could say to her. “Stop trying to impress me.”
Yet he is impressed. Pleased. And not just at how thus far he has underestimated her capabilities, her drive, but more so at the fact that she is not as thin as he’d originally surmised from the bagginess of her sweatshirt. He has to strain to see it now, but an hour or so ago, when, in the day’s waning light Reyn forged ahead, he noticed a tightness of her jeans he hadn’t before. Taut against the backs of her thighs. Shifting waistband halted at, and by, her developing hips. Enough to think her older than he did upon finding her. Fourteen, he thinks. Maybe fifteen, and accelerating now, taking charge, forging a narrow trail for him.
Vitri stops for a moment when what he thinks is a spooked squirrel leaps from a nearby tree and onto the forest floor. He listens. To the twigs Reyn’s feet snap ahead. To the rustling of the squirrel. And, before he continues, he hears the jangle of metal to his left, the pitter-patter of the squirrel bounding over hollow wood. Then it is gone, and Vitri only hears Reyn’s steps, distant now, fading. He pulls his scarf down. Wipes the sweat from his cheeks and upper lip. Takes the flashlight from his pocket, clicks it on, white light hovering over the copper-tinted pine needles at his feet. Looks ahead, where he last saw Reyn. Slowly aims the light that way, hoping for her to see it, to turn back. When she doesn’t, Vitri, knowing that Reyn will eventually look for him and see that he hasn’t kept up, begins aiming the light elsewhere, searching for the origin of that hollow sound. He shrouds a trio of gouged tree trunks in light, gashes not made by saw teeth or bird beak, but a drill of some sort; several deep, thumb-wide holes line the trunks from left to right.
Vitri cautiously rotates the light over more matted weeds, more trees, more grey, and brown, and yellow. And then, in a small clearing no more than twenty feet from where he stands, he sees it: the white light shimmers off of a ground-level door latch. He squints. Steps through weeds, toward the clearing. Stops. Shines the door—fresh wood stained amber, a thin layer of dirt over top. A rusted latch.
Still no Reyn. No footsteps. No twigs.
It’s a trap, Vitri thinks. He pictures a wire-rigged shotgun. A metal spike driven to his gut by hydraulics. Masked men and women sprinting to the sound. So he stops. Shines its perimeter, shines all around, keen on locating the trigger. Sees nothing. Hears nothing. Thinks only of going back to the trail, of finding Reyn. He clicks off the flashlight and begins to do just that, turning around entirely, stepping through untouched weeds, stopping only when his right shin strikes something thin but sturdy, something immovable, stopping not because of how it feels, but because of the sound it creates, the quick burst of air.
A tree branch snaps. Detaches. Falls to the ground. The door is fired off, eight feet into the sky, sparks trailing, leaving only a quick-to-fade afterglow on the hole’s rim.
Vitri draws the 9mm before the door crashes. Clicks on the flashlight. Aims both at the hole as he backs away, awaiting what comes next. But there is nothing. Nothing from that hole, nothing from beyond. A silhouette, a sound, for seconds there is nothing. So, flashlight still on, pistol still drawn, Vitri turns and locates Reyn’s matted trail. Resumes his path. Sidesteps along, pistol still aimed. Further. Further.
And further. His mouth goes dry. His eyes water. He wheezes—soft at first, but harsher now, phlegm in the back of his throat layering itself. His vision fades. He stumbles forward. Falls to his knees. His torso constricts, searching for more than water to send up and out. He crawls. Forward he crawls, leaving the dropped flashlight, the 9mm. Forward. Forward.
Between his attempts at breath he can hear it: liquid dripping onto the leaves. Chemicals spilling from those gouged trees. Bitter on his tongue. Sour. Sharp in his lungs. But he crawls and, as he does, the wheeze evolves into a cough. Crawl, he thinks, go, go-go-go, crawl, crawl, fucking crawl. Twenty feet from where he fell. Twenty-five.
Thirty.
Thirty-five.
palm trees, a calm gulf, his wife slipping off a pink bikini, sashaying like a ballerina across white sand, toward him, towards their home, alone atop a gently-sloping dune, their son waving from a second-story window,
Reyn appears alongside Carmen and, at first, she is smiling, her face no longer damaged but full, cute, bronzed skin, cleaned teeth. But her smile soon fades. Trees appear, branches sawn, tops rounded like recently amputated arms,
liquid spews from the trunk, onto Reyn, onto his wife, who falls to her knees and vomits onto each grain of darkening sand, torso locked, skin peeling, and Carmen is smiling, watching and smiling, smiling so wide, laughing now with Reyn’s wounded tongue
Water on his forehead, water on his cheeks, water on his lips, on his chin, beading to his neck. Vitri opens his eyes to see Reyn crouching over him, raincoat hood up, eyes wide, sweat on her forehead, left hand tilting a bottle of water. Her right hand is on his chest, rising and falling as he does. After setting the bottle nearby, Reyn helps Vitri sit up, then clicks on the flashlight, guiding the light over the notebook on his lap.
Vitri inhales. Exhales. Wipes the water from his face. Bends his knees. Wiggles his feet. Feels how soggy his groin is. Can smell the urine. Takes a deep breath. Nods.
Vitri’s mind begins its clamber back to cognizance. Questions flood. How long have I been here? Are you hurt too? Has there been anyone else? When Vitri reaches for the notebook, Reyn pulls away. She points to:
And then once more to:
Vitri shifts his legs again. Bends his knees. Wiggles his feet. Nods. As soon as he does, Reyn sets the flashlight on the ground, places the notebook into her backpack, then, facing Vitri, extends her arms. Once Vitri latches on, she anchors her weight to her heels, anticipating a harsh tug toward the ground, a grasp at her forearms. But, soon enough, and with effort from both parties, Vitri is on his feet. Wobbly, but okay, upright and walking in the dark—one step south, two steps, three. Reyn catches up. Places the 9mm in his hand. Bounds ahead, turns, walks alongside him, smiles. For one-hundred feet they walk like this, she encouraging him as if he were a toddler.
One-hundred feet becomes one-hundred yards. Two-hundred. Vitri’s wheezing eases. His legs loosen. Reyn turns, leads him under trees, through clusters of brush her feet have already trampled over, the occasional mole hole of moist soil caught in the white light Vitri aims at the ground. Reyn increases her pace as they angle southeast, down a gentle hill that leads to several more. Up-down, up-down they go for two minutes, three, a stale note of pine on the west-blowing breeze.
Before they reach what Vitri believes to be the last hill, Reyn turns. She watches his feet, his shins, his thighs, and he hates that she does.
She then plugs her left thumb into the night sky, eyes quizzical, awaiting a response. As he walks toward her, Vitri nods. He wheezes, but holds his thumb up and does his best to shoo her forward.
“Stop checking on me,” he manages to say.
Reyn then crests the last hill, leaving Vitri to watch her waist disappear, her back, her shoulders, her neck. Down a twenty-five-foot decline she goes, into what Vitri, as he approaches, sees is a U-shaped clearing, trees on all but one side.
In the center of the clearing stands a dark one-story building. Thirty by eighty. Several doors, several small windows, a parking lot to the south with a large sign overhead, text facing the adjacent gravel road. Vitri’s assumption that it had once been a hotel of some sort—at the least, some remote cabin, a bed and breakfast—is confirmed as he works his way down the hill and the numbers above each door become visible. #1, #3, #5, all odd numbers painted on its northwest side. He clicks off the flashlight once he sees that the windows have been boarded. By then, just when he feels she must be flagged down and alerted to the fact that someone else must call this home, Reyn, thirty or so feet in front of him, walks along the north side of the building, to the east, then turns and is out of sight.
Reyn’s legs are partially lit by the caged red light above the seafoam door of #8. #6: yellow light. #4: purple. #2: green, each bulb free of caps, bottom ends instead coiled in copper wire. Stapled tight to the wall, the copper wire from each eventually straightens and, fed between the wall and their respective door’s hinge, continues inside to copper bowls of nails, screws, washers, other chunks of metal.
Having spent nearly ten minutes in #8 earlier, she knows there are three more red lights on the other side of the door. A television, a table snug against chintzy green and yellow wallpaper. There is a bathroom. A cracked porcelain tub, a rusting showerhead, a toilet without water. She knows there’s one armchair, and one small bed.
When Vitri appears, Reyn’s smile fades. The scarf is back on, tied tight. His pistol is drawn, gripped by both hands as he walks toward her. Not once does he lower that pistol. Not once does he glance at Reyn. Not once does he notice her waving arms, her shaking head. His eyes shift instead from the easternmost woods, to the half-lit patches of cement, to the door of #8.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Until he nudges open the door and Reyn is left to watch him storm in, the pistol’s definition a blur, appearing instead as an extension of his hands, his hands and arms an extension of his chest. He proceeds to probe the room. Tousles the quilt. Aims at each corner. Peeks around the bathroom door. Then, he looks at her in disgust. Waves her inside and, as soon as her feet are out of range, slams the door. The copper wire fed through the doorframe fractures. The red light outside of #8 goes dark.
As Reyn sets each backpack on the bed, she is nudged aside by Vitri, who, having shoved his pistol back into his waistband, frantically unzips and tears into Reyn’s backpack. Out comes the notebook. Out comes a pen. When he is finished writing, he tosses the notebook onto the bed.
In the red light, Reyn watches Vitri rip the scarf from his face. Watches him gulp from a plastic water bottle. Watches him pace the room. There are creases all over his face. Above his eyebrows, on the bridge of his nose, rippling across his forehead. Frustration.
And Reyn is confused. You are no longer on the ground, she thinks. We are no longer in the woods. There are four walls. We won’t need to start a fire. We won’t have to waste a candle, nor the batteries of the flashlight. There is warmth. There is warmth, and I saved you. What more do you want?
She offers the notebook to Vitri as if it were a porcelain ornament she’d broken, eyes down, unable to help herself from flinching as Vitri yanks it from her hands. She glances at him as he reads. Watches him sigh. Watches him rub an eye with his left hand. When he sits on the bed, Reyn scoots as far away as she can, holding the pen out for whenever he is ready.
HOW?
LOOK!
WE’LL LEAVE WHEN THEY WANT US TO
WON’T GET THE FUCKING OPTION
WE’LL BE SAFE HERE
NO BACK DOOR. NO SIDE DOOR
THERE’S A FRONT DOOR
THAT’S WHERE THEY’LL ALL BE
THE MASKED?
ANYONE
WE’LL BE SAFE HERE
YEAH?
I WAITED. I WATCHED. YOU NEVER CAME. I WENT BACK AND?
NOTHING
DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING?
NO
DIDN’T SMELL ANYTHING?
NO
DID YOU HEAR ANYTHING?
Guilt no longer resides in Reyn’s body. No, no, this is anger. This is rage. Her hands twist into fists. She picks up the notebook and throws it across the room, then kneels on the bed and shoves Vitri in the back as hard as she can, the first, the unexpected, being the most effective, Vitri’s torso tilting sideways. Fuck you, she wishes she could shout. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. But Vitri braces himself. Tightens his core until Reyn’s actions morph from shock to annoyance.
He shoves Reyn back. Once. Hard. Down she goes on the bed, wounded cheek crashing into a risen spring. She feels something in her throat, a tiny ball of energy evolving, expanding into something that can no longer stay, into something that she rolls its way up and off of her tongue. And then Vitri’s hands are on her neck, fingers wrapped around that ball, pressing, pressuring, doing their best to cut it off. When it is kneaded away, so go his fingers. So go his hands.
Seconds later, Vitri is off the bed. A dejected Reyn lifts her head high enough to watch him retrieve the notebook. As he turns around, Reyn, ferocity now tainted by terror, scurries as far away from him as she can, to the narrow headboard. When he is finished writing, Vitri walks toward the bed, ignorant of how Reyn braces herself for a blow. Sets the notebook next to her. Grabs a pillow. Plops the pillow on the floor, at the food-end of the bed. She waits until he lies down to read.
I CAN'T
Without rising from the bed, without even craning her neck to spot his exact location on the floor, Reyn tosses the notebook in Vitri’s direction, then the pen. She hopes the spine nicks his chin, gashes it, leaves some sort of blemish, a bruise, a scab, a scar. In a matter of fifteen seconds, up the notebook comes at her, pages still bound but awry, altering its flight. Then comes the pen, tumbling through the air, end over end.
Listen to Part 8 Author Commentary
Peek behind the scenes of Part 8 with author Garrett Francis.