Human Remains

by Melissa Yi

  I screamed. I knew who this was.

  He couldn't be here. He couldn't risk his life, or Roxy's life, like this.

  He couldn't have gotten here this fast.

  Boom.

  He kicked a second time. Just as hard, or even harder. The glass shuddered.

  "NO, Ryan! They have a GUN!"

  He couldn't hear me over the alarm or Roxy. I shouted anyway. Ryan kicked a third time.

  The glass cracked.

  Yelling all around me. Stephen Weaver hadn't stopped. Fat Guy bent over for his holster.

  The gun.

  He was going to shoot Ryan. He was going to shoot Roxy. He was going to kill everything I loved, all over again.

  I sprang off the lab bench. I barely registered the impact of my feet hitting the floor, the now-familiar burst of pain in my ankle.

  I'd vaulted over Stephen Weaver. I was running at Fat Guy.

  I was screeching. I was howling. I was a force of nature, leaping straight on to Fat Guy and battling him for the gun.

  Chapter 51

  Skinny tried to wrench me off.

  One hand on my mouth, the other on my neck.

  Jerking my head back. Instant C-spine pain, but not paralysis. I clamped down on Fat Guy.

  Skinny smothered me with the other hand. He stank. I bit him. Hard.

  Tasted blood and dirt. Spat it out.

  Stomped his instep. Elbowed his ribs and missed, but jerked my head up to head butt him.

  Skinny let go, swearing up a storm that I could hardly hear over the alarm.

  I bolted myself onto Fat Guy, as wide as my arms could reach, screaming with my now-free mouth, "Kill me! Kill ME!"

  I could hear Ryan kicking, and Roxy barking, but they hadn't broken through. Not yet. They were still safe. The bad guys were more likely to attack me, the wild thing in their midst, instead of firing on the ghosts on the opposite sides of the glass.

  "Police!" someone shouted.

  I shook my head. I was hallucinating. I hadn't called them. How had they—how had Ryan—

  "POLICE!"

  I froze.

  Time slowed down. I could smell Fat Guy's sweat. I could feel his chest heaving.

  He didn't want to die. None of us wanted to die.

  Roxy's barking receded as Ryan towed her backwards. I released Fat Guy and sprang away from the glass.

  I tore back into the room. Toward Ducky's lab bench. Toward the windows.

  Last time, the police used a flash bomb, a grenade that blinds and deafens you.

  Have to get away. Have to—

  Something tackled me.

  Smashed me to the floor, left hip first, then stomach. I couldn't breathe.

  Something enormous, and sweaty, and furious flattened me. My bare skin burned—face, neck.

  Bits of glass crushed into my cheek when I hit the ground in Stephen Weaver's acid bath and glass hug.

  I gulped for air.

  My diaphragm heaved, but I wasn't getting air.

  He was smothering me. He was howling.

  Breathe, God damn it.

  BREATHE!

  My chest heaved. Air.

  A tiny breath of air.

  YES!

  Glass shattered.

  Stephen Weaver rammed my head into the floor. BOOM.

  Bright light penetrated my closed eyelids, even head down. After that, nothing. Like my ears had shut down.

  I knew what this was. Flash bomb.

  Flash bang. Stun grenade.

  First, the flash to dazzle the retinas.

  Then the bang. Over 170 decibels. Deafening. And now the smoke.

  I could feel their footsteps through the floor as they stormed into the lab.

  I held my breath, closed my eyes, and waited for Stephen Weaver to suck in the smoke.

  His chest heaved. He coughed.

  Bingo. I wriggled.

  He tried to clench his hands around my throat, but he was too busy sucking for air.

  It's terrible, not being able to breathe.

  Ask Lawrence. Ask Dahiyyah. Ask Baby Hope, if she could've talked.

  I surged out from under him with my hands in the air.

  Chapter 52

  After a thorough decontamination shower, calcium gel in case it really was hydrofluoric acid, a double eye wash, and more blood and urine tests than I ever wanted in my life, I sagged into my emergency department stretcher and closed my eyes.

  Breathing. I couldn't get over how awesome that was.

  I could hear a bit better, too. Flash bombs aren't supposed to permanently deafen you, but this was my second one.

  Jamais deux sans trois.

  With any luck, not for a long time.

  On the upside, because my ears' hair cells had krumped out, the cardiac monitor and O2 sat's beeps and alarms didn't bother me much. Ryan pulled up a chair. He stroked my hair for a long, silent moment.

  Then he said, in my ear, "I knew you were in trouble. I was already on my way over."

  "But how?" It hurt to push words through my raw throat. I didn't care. I needed to know.

  "I watched you on the Finding Friends app, down to the micro scale."

  I almost laughed, but it hurt too much. His words made my ears ring. I squeezed my eyes shut, still listening.

  "I saw you going into Dr. Hay's lab. Got me worried. I dropped everything and started driving. I was going to stand by, keeping tabs on you, but after you called me, and the phone went dead, I busted in."

  "With Roxy."

  He half-grinned. "Rachel had dropped her off in my car. I wanted to get OHSC security riled up. That was the fastest way. And hey, it's always good to have a Rottweiler on your side, isn't it?"

  "Sure is." They'd taken Roxy to a vet. I was pretty sure that she'd be okay. I hadn't touched her, and she hadn't entered the lab of death, although the flash bombs would be hell on her sensitive eyes, ears and nose. "You called the police?"

  "Yeah, but I think security had already called them. Between Lawrence and Dahiyyah dying, and two strange guys going in the lab … "

  I gave a mental thumbs-up to Harold. Even though the younger security guards had beat him to the scene, I bet he'd sounded the alarm.

  Ryan studied my face. "Why are you smiling?"

  My face and neck smarted. My ankle hurt, not only from the sprained ligaments, but from the acid burns. My throat rasped. And yet Ryan was right. I was smiling.

  I shrugged. Longer explanations would have to wait until I could say more than two words. I didn't understand it myself.

  I should have been paralyzed with fear when Fat Guy pointed that gun at me. I'd been in stasis since 14/11.

  Instead, my gut instinct had kicked in. I had a strong feeling that they wouldn't kill me. That I could manipulate them.

  For sure, I'd jumped the shark. Who quotes Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe at armed racists who outnumber you three to one?

  But I felt like myself for the first time since 14/11. I still had PTSD. That wouldn't go away any time soon, or maybe ever. And yet, for the first time, I realized that PTSD also had me. I would not quit.

  I gave Ryan the OK sign, pinching my thumb and forefinger together to make the O and letting my other fingers splay into the air like a K. That reminded me of the KKK, and my breath jerked for a second.

  Like I once read in Ms. Magazine, we are all carriers of the disease called racism.

  Mario Balotelli, an insanely talented Italian footballer, put it like this: "You can't delete racism. It's like a cigarette. You can't stop smoking if you don't want to, and you can't stop racism if people don't want to. But I'll do everything I can to help."

  Ryan folded me into his arms.

  His phone rang, and we ignored it, my nose tucked into the corner between his neck and shoulder, until he gave an exasperated sigh and checked it. "Oh. Kevin wants to know if you're up."

  I gave him the thumbs up and waited for my parents to rip open the curtain and for Kevin to bound onto my belly.

&nb
sp; I felt surprisingly good.

  Last month, during 14/11, I had to protect three other people: Manouchka, her baby, and (let's admit it) most of all, Tucker.

  This month, only I might've died. And if I did, oh well. There were 7.5 billion people on the planet who could replace me.

  It made no sense, but I wasn't as scared of dying anymore.

  All that breeeathing had some effect on me after all. It made me realize that this is what we've got: right now. A bit of oxygen and a bit of earth to walk on.

  Fate kept tossing me head-first at the world's menaces. I didn't know why. Mrs. Lee, the mother of one victim, had told me that I was a young soul who was trying to grow up fast, which made my life very hard.

  Was that true? I had no idea.

  But the earth is full of human ass maggots who want to rape, kill, and immolate.

  For profit. For fun.

  As long as I'm here, I'm going to toss them into the incinerator myself. One body at a time.

  Chapter 53

  SUNDAY

  I nearly fell asleep during the service for Lawrence and Baby Hope in the hospital chapel. Not out of disrespect, but because I was so exhausted. One thing that kept me sentient was that I had to keep standing up and sitting down on hard, wooden pews as we alternated between hymns and prayers. Ryan let me nod off on his shoulder during the sermon. We sat at the back of the small, overheated room, next to the pianist who played so intensely that the bouquet of carnations balanced on the piano top jiggled with each song.

  The other thing jerking me back to consciousness was them talking about the tragedy of Hope dying so young.

  It was like a funeral for myself.

  I thought I spied a silver hip flask on Mitch when he sat in the pew across from us. I stared at it awfully hard, but I didn't ask to borrow it. Like Ryan had pointed out, and one of the mother characters in Amy Tan's novels said, "Don't hook on, don't need stop."

  Joan made a speech at the end. A short one, since she wanted to get back to baby Angella, who couldn't leave the NICU. I kept my eyes open and let her words wash over me like a musical shower until she said, "Doctor Hope. Doctor Hope!"

  Ryan grasped my elbow and lifted it upward, to cue me.

  Oh. I stood up while the room applauded—Mitch whooped—and I tried to smile at the battalion of eyes feasting on me.

  Joan continued, "Mr. Ryan helped to find my husband, and with my babies too!"

  Ryan rose to his feet, and I clapped for him, much relieved.

  We retreated to an adjoining room for food. I had to grin at all the casseroles, from macaroni to zucchini lasagna.

  No banana juice. Joan had been recuperating, submitting to tests, and staying in the NICU with Angella as much as possible. The media were fascinated by the first Canadian case of Zisa-herpes. If they got a whiff of the possible Rift Valley link, they'd wet themselves. In the meantime, Joan handled Jonathan Wexler better than I did.

  "You should eat," said Susan, appearing at my side with a plateful of cheese and crackers. She wore a black pantsuit that reminded me of Dr. Hay, although her open-mouthed purse and plain flats were too unfashionable for the scientist.

  I flinched. "I can't." They'd found cyanide in Lawrence's stomach, along with almond cookie and some rooibos tea. For now, it was safer not to eat if I couldn't inspect the food every step of the way.

  However, not eating was no guarantee. Dahiyyah's blood tested positive for cyanide, but her stomach was empty. We thought she might have inhaled it or absorbed it through her skin. Summer had told me that cyanide dissolves so well in DMSO, its nickname is liquid death.

  I closed my eyes in memory of Dahiyyah. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it, as Nelson Mandela had pointed out.

  Next, I mentally saluted Dr. Lawrence Acayo. He'd protected his family as best he could before he and Dahiyyah lost their lives attempting to stop a quiet massacre.

  "You have to eat something." Susan swung her plate toward me. "The cheddar is very good. Or even a cracker."

  My mother had made me some spring onion pancakes for breakfast. "No, really, I—"

  "You're a hero, Hope. You should keep your strength up." She shook the plate, bouncing some cubes of cheese off the edge.

  "Oh, no!" Cheese is expensive. I tried to catch the cubes in mid-air, which must've looked like I was trying to swipe at her with a bear paw, because she jerked backward before she remembered to hold on to her food and her purse at the same time.

  Crackers and cheese scattered on the floor, along with some personal items. Susan hurried to scoop her wallet off the tile.

  I was going to grab her phone, which, unlike mine, had survived with its screen intact, but a yellow pill bottle's label caught my eye.

  Graham, Susan. Valcyclovir 1 g by mouth twice a day for ten days.

  My hand gripped the bottle until the ridges of its white lid embedded itself into my fingertips.

  "I'll take those," said Susan, who'd managed to refill her purse and scoop up the stray food while I clutched her medicine.

  "You have herpes," I whispered.

  "What are you talking about?" said Susan.

  I twisted the bottle so the white label pointed at her. "This is the treatment for primary genital herpes. You take a shorter course for recurrent episodes."

  She snatched the bottle out of my hand and dropped it in her purse. "You had an affair with Dr. Acayo." I'd been so distracted by the Zisa and herpes comorbidity that I hadn't considered where poor, pious Immaculate Joan had contracted her case of herpes.

  He loved white women. Dr. Hay wouldn't sully herself with Lawrence. There was only one other pure Aryan woman on the floor, and she was standing right in front of me. I hadn't considered her because she was old and portly, compared to Summer "Boobs" Holdt. I tried to gentle my voice. "I know primary herpes simplex 2 can be excruciating."

  Susan's mouth pinched together. "I have no idea what you mean."

  "He gave you herpes. Stephen Weaver found out. That's why he was writing about miscegenation." If I hadn't been in an interracial relationship myself, I might not know the old-fashioned word for it.

  Susan snapped her purse shut, tossed her cheese and crackers in the garbage, and strode out the door without a word.

  My nails cut into my palms. I couldn't charge her with anything. No one goes to prison for adultery. And yet, when I thought of Joan and her two tiny babies, one of them fighting for her life, the other in a miniature casket, hatred burned in my heart.

  It helped slightly that Stephen Weaver was currently incarcerated with burns and corneal abrasions. Burns are painful.

  Skinny and Fat Guy had confessed to dumping Lawrence's body in a panic on Sunday night when they spied the lights for the R.I.D.E. program. Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere became Racists Inactivated, Dumped Evidence.

  Yet how, exactly, had they gotten a hold of Lawrence?

  I suspected that Ducky really had spotted Susan on Sunday. Susan must have offered to bring an ailing Lawrence home, but somehow delivered him to his death, under Stephen's invisible hand.

  Which meant that not everyone culpable was yet behind bars. Herpes wasn't punishment enough.

  The police would have to gather evidence against Susan. Dahiyyah couldn't testify any more, but I'd do everything in my power to bring Susan to trial. In the meantime, we knew exactly who Susan Graham was, where she lived, where she worked, and what she drove.

  My eyes burned as I gazed at the doorway.

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

  I'd give that arc some manual readjustment.

  Summer tapped toward me in matte black heels that matched her fitted dress, ahead of the other Scoobies. She silently offered me a glass of apple juice. I shook my head.

  She sipped it without taking offence. "Did you say what I thought you said?"

  I shrugged. I didn't want to spread gossip, but this was a lab. They'd all know
within 50 seconds anyway.

  Summer wrinkled her nose. "Lawrence had an affair with Susan and gave her herpes?"

  "Who'd a thunk it?" said Mitch, winding his arm around Summer. His suit jacket rode up, revealing that hip flask. I averted my eyes. "Besides you," he added politely, to me.

  Chris's eyebrows quirked.

  Summer turned on him immediately. "You knew?" Chris shrugged.

  I eyeballed him. If that guy ever spoke, what stories he could tell.

  Mitch rubbed Summer's shoulder in a more-than-friends way that seemed ooky for a racist. I told him, straight out, "I thought you were alt-right. You, Chris, Dr. Hay … "

  Mitch grimaced. "That was this thing I was trying out."

  "What, like a new pair of pants?" I said.

  Summer took a step back, forcing Mitch's hand to fall to his side. Her lip curled.

  Mitch pressed his lips together and shifted his weight from foot to foot, his cheeks red. "After Chris got that spam, I thought it would be cool to infiltrate them. You know, like a Nazi hunter. So I started researching them. Learning their lingo. I thought … " He sighed. "I joined up. I checked out websites. I even messaged some of them. But it got too intense. I ended up compiling all the info and forwarding it to the police."

  Great. The last thing we needed was for Ryan to get in trouble for his White Birthright website.

  On the other hand, Dr. Hay had escaped serious scrutiny until now. If the police turned up any kind of evidence against her, based on Ryan's website, he would consider it worth the hassle.

  At least Dr. Hay's lab had been destroyed. Flash-bombed, a site of acid spills, cyanide poisoning, and broken glass, with no graduate students and no research assistants. She was the only person left standing.

  Ryan appeared in the doorway. My heart rate doubled. He spotted me. I loved the brightness of his dark eyes and the curve of his lips. He ambled toward me, and I couldn't not watch him walk. He was like living, breathing poetry, to me.

  Ryan's arm slid around my waist. I beamed like a goon, and Summer winked at me.

  "We did it," Ryan said.

  My smile widened even further. "Roxy for the win," said Mitch.