by Micah Thomas
“Hello?” she croaked to no one in particular. She needed fluids. Even in her daze, her medical knowledge was there, accessible and sending her a warning that she was dehydrated.
To her surprise, a slender arm and a small hand held a sippy cup to her mouth. She wasn’t alone. Cassie turned towards the hand and saw a young girl sitting beside her cot.
“Drink,” the girl said in that serious voice children sometimes have.
Cassie did. Salty. Pedialyte. This works. I won’t die here. I’ve got a baby nurse watching out for me. This was her last thought as she slipped back into a warm cotton unconsciousness. No dreams. No visions. If time passed, Cassie didn’t realize it. When she awoke again, the sheet was hot and heavy as a blanket lined with heated bricks.
She felt nauseous and heard language rambling out of her mouth, unfiltered and unsolicited. “I won’t remember your name. Not because I wasn’t touched by your loveliness, but you see, I’m only ever passing through. Once I’m gone, twice I’m gone, and on and on.
“Shh. You’re okay,” a male voice said to her.
She sobbed. “No. I’m not okay.”
Did she imagine a fire, or was that a kerosene lantern? The flickering was a comfort. She stared at it. Dancing flame. Cassie wanted to knock it over and set the tent on fire. She wanted to die the same as the people she’d burned up. So many. Burned up. She deserved to be with them. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Again, she was submerged into wordless sleep.
When at last Cassie woke again, the tent flap was open and her mind was clear. Even the pain had reduced to a pinch in her side. She sat up in her cot and looked down at her body. Old scars, new scars, white bandage on brown skin.
A man walked into the tent with a casualness that seemed preposterous to Cassie. His sandy brown hair and blue eyes settled nicely on his nice, white dude face. His demeanor had that friendliness of Bob Ross and Mr. Rogers. She pictured him being good with kids, and the type of person to pull over to help change a flat.
“You’re feeling better?” he asked.
“I am. Thank you.”
“We were worried for a minute that you might not pull through.”
“Me, too.”
He smiled at this and averted his eyes from her bare chest as he sat next to her. He was the real nurse that saved me, she thought. “May I?” he gestured to her bandages.
“Sure thing.”
“The bullet passed straight through. There was no need for surgery, which, lucky for you, was great because I’ve never operated on a human.” He inspected the dressing and checked for signs of infection. Finding none, he straightened up and made eye contact with Cassie. “I’m Jeff, resident veterinarian and de facto doctor for our merry band.”
“Cassie. What about my friend?”
“Henry? I’m sorry. You said his name quite a lot when we found you. He didn’t make it. His wounds, they were too severe.”
Cassie swallowed hard to send her sobs down to the aching lump in her chest. Don. He was talking about Don. “Thank you,” she managed to say before weeping. When she caught her breath, she said, “I’d be dead without your help. I can’t believe you found me. Hey, how did you find me? Why you were in the woods?”
He sighed. “Well, that is a long and wild story.”
“I have one like that.”
“I bet you do. Before we get to sharing scars, I know you are still recovering—this week has been good for you, but jeez, here it is: we need to get going. We don’t have a permanent camp anywhere, but this one is especially vulnerable. Plus, the weather is getting cold.”
“Who are you people?”
“We um…we are good people who don’t particularly enjoy our political options.”
“What?”
“Can you drive?” he asked. “Not today, obviously. Today, I’ll drive, but the truck will be useful and we are short on people who can drive stick.”
“Yes. I can drive.”
“Great!”
The little girl—Cassie’s other nurse—came running into the tent and hugged Jeff. “This monkey is my daughter. She’s shy, but she stayed by you as much as I’d let her.”
“What’s your name?” Cassie asked her.
The girl buried her head in her father’s armpit and mumbled something.
“Her name is Katherine, but some days she prefers Kate, and some other days it’s Kathy. Between us, it’s Monkey. Isn’t that right, Monkey?”
Cassie closed her eyes to this. She’d been taken out of the wilderness, off the path of adventure, and dropped into some gentle place that made no sense to her. Jeff left her to take care of some important business she didn’t understand. Then, Cassie was shuttled from the tent to the bed of Don’s truck while the camp was deconstructed around her. She saw a mix of men and women, mostly young, in a mix of mid-20s and 30s. Predominantly white. Kate was the only child as far as she could tell. A black dog—also the only one Cassie had seen—jumped into the truck bed with her. She supposed it was cold out, but Cassie was still medicated and thoroughly wrapped in heavy blankets. The dog pressed in close to her and she enjoyed its weight. She had to give it to them: these people were efficient. Cassie couldn’t tell their numbers; it seemed like there was a small town here, but they could be as few as twenty. They had cars. They must have resources. Who are these people?
Cassie clutched the dog as the caravan inch-wormed ahead. Riding in Don’s truck without Don made Cassie incredibly depressed. He was such a good guy. Didn’t deserve to go that way. She still didn’t know what happened, but she had the sense Xavi had bit the big one, too. Despite him not being such a nice guy after all, it still didn’t seem right. They’d learned next to nothing. Or if Henry learned something about himself, he wasn’t talking about it.
She hadn’t felt anything from him since before getting shot. Cassie refused to believe he was gone. Someone had pulled her from the fire. Don was not in any shape to have carried her, so it had to have been Henry driving her body. Which meant he had to be there, nursing his wounds in her mind even if he was unable to talk. Cassie let the vibration of the truck and her opioid-mellowed senses rock her into a trance. She felt around at the world with her mind, wondering how much of this was her imagination and how much was her quiet ability enabling her to sense things and people. Deeper and deeper she followed her fluctuating state of perception, reaching and gently calling for Henry. Cassie could sense him nearby and hoped she wasn’t high and full of wishful thinking.
Cassie was pulled from her meditation by Jeff, who was riding shotgun and talking to her through the rear window. “Whoa, you okay? Spacing out there?”
“I’m fine,” she said, groggy and wiping her eyes. “Jeff, what did you do before the Raid?”
“I was a veterinary surgeon. Mostly dogs, some cats, a little bit of livestock in my early years.”
“Why didn’t you join the great migration? A lot of people did.”
“In a word: Wiseman. Do you know who I’m talking about? He was on TV and radio a few months before things…before all the changes.”
“Yeah. I guess I know.”
“I saw something in his teachings that I’d needed to hear my entire life.”
“So you don’t think he was a nut job or part of the Raid itself, like they said?”
“I used to trust the government. I know it sounds foolish, but I thought the world made sense. There’s decision-makers and then there’s the rest of us, going about our lives, protected from terrorists and criminals. And business—international business—made things safe. ‘Made in China’, right?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said, pretty sure her trust in the powers that be had shattered long before the Raid, somewhere alongside a road in Afghanistan when a bomb had exploded. Everything after that was just life, but she knew what he meant.
“What about you? Why didn’t you join the rainbow children on the march to wherever they went? What are you looking for, Cassie?”
She couldn’t answer. Didn’t kno
w the answer. Not at first. The words came out then, and they sounded true enough to her. “I’m sick of running away.”
***
The caravan boldly took highways, and Cassie spent her time mostly with Jeff. The picture of the world he shared was almost entirely inline with what Don had told her, except Jeff said he had an ace up his sleeve. He said he’d explain once they were in Florida, at the winter camp site. She wanted to know how they managed to live off the grid if the government was this scary, totalitarian thing. How could they survive outside the rigid credit system? Outside the tracking of every remaining person's daily life?
Cassie returned to the topic once they arrived. Her strength had returned over the week and she walked unassisted, albeit with a limp in her left leg she feared might be permanent. Still, with time, she was able to use the bathroom alone. It wasn’t only the gunshot. During her blackout, something had definitely happened. Cassie seriously considered she’d slipped a disc or something. She was fine, though not fine enough to strike out on her own. With Don gone—Henry gone—where would she even go? Her motivation for everything was gone, gone, gone. Jeff must have sensed she was restless and had an answer for that as well.
“We have help,” he said. “You probably won’t believe what I’m going to say.”
“I have an open mind.”
“She survived something terrible and came back changed. I don’t know the source of her wisdom, but she is our seer. She knows everything. She can see everything. Though she is very sick, our entire lives are mapped out by her.”
“You have a psychic with you?”
“It wasn’t an accident that we were out in the woods that day. We were looking for you.”
Cassie hardened. Did they have a Henry, some poor soul bound to a fucking demon, or someone like Xavi, born with something special? There was a risk here. There were things about herself she’d rather these sweet, kind people—Jeff especially—not know.
So she limped to the woman’s tent. From the outside, the tent looked the same as the rest; sturdy canvas, new materials with no sign of wear, no special markings. Cassie took a deep breath and entered, letting the flap close behind her.
It was dark inside. Light eked from an oil lantern. The smell. Cassie suppressed a gag. This was a smell she knew from working in hospice: death. Urine and death. The woman was bald, barely concealing her nakedness in a tattered night robe. She lay half-reclined against a mound of pillows and blankets. Her body was scarred and shiny in some places; an old woman’s body, burnt by some terrible fire. Her breathing was a wheezy rasp. Cassie could hear the phlegm in the woman’s lungs and suppressed the desire to give medical advice.
“Hi, I’m Cassie. Jeff said that you know things. Special things. Is that true?”
She rolled her eyes over to Cassie. The left was hazel and muddy, but the right—holy god—a piercing bright blue. Cassie felt the eye look right through her, summing her up in way that gave her chills. Not natural. Cassie knew it suddenly, but damn if she didn’t wish Henry was here to fill in the gaps.
Cassie made eye contact and regretted it. Whatever position the woman’s face had been tentatively holding shifted into a slack, non-expression. In her wide eyes, Cassie saw fragility teetering on the edge of animal panic. Cassie thought, I have nothing to say to that, and looked away.
Her voice was as twisted as her form. “Do you seek a Vorpol blade?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The word was somewhat familiar, but Cassie couldn’t recall from where.
“I name you god killer,” she said, scooching up in her pillow mound. “I see your heart. I’ve seen you heal. I’ve seen you kill.”
“What about Henry? Can you see him? Is he alive?”
“Best to ask only about yourself, and even then, only things you need to know.”
Cassie hated riddles. She felt the woman was fucking with her and she nearly had enough of it. “What are you? What are you telling these people?”
The lantern’s flame leaped to life. The glass cracked with a loud pop, but the darkness resisted the light. Cassie couldn’t tell if the room darkened and dimmed or if part of this was in her mind. The haze in this space touched her, messing with her second sight—Cassie knew it. There was an occlusion, a gauze over her perception. “There’s something not right about you. How did you come to be like this?”
Her sigh turned into a moan. “The things I see are true.”
The world hushed. Cassie wanted to pop her ears, release the painful pressure of a jet upon take off. Light-headed she leaned on her crutch.
Cassie saw the woman through her left eye, but through her right, her vision clouded over. She was going to rub her eye when she saw a bright, desert sky. Was this Arizona? The city below was familiar. There was a crowd of homeless. Cassie felt motion sick as the vision swayed. Whoever she was seeing through, they were walking. The gaze turned back and through the crowd—god damn—she saw Wiseman. He sat surrounded by sycophants, a jolly old king, a happy grandfatherly figure. His brown skin was tanned by the Nevada sun and he sported a short white beard. He looked like black Santa Claus on vacation. The gaze turned back around, weaving through the crowd.
There he was. Henry. Beautiful, wearing the same suit as when Cassie had met him. He’d said it was his grandfather’s. That he’d worn it to a wedding. Oh, fuck. She felt then exactly how she’d felt when he’d found her that same day—or maybe it was a little after. Cassie didn’t know and it didn’t matter. She touched her own cheek, unsurprised by the tears she found there. Oh, god. Henry. Where are you? The pain of her loss made her body shake.
“Stop it.” Cassie closed her eyes and shook her head, but the vision remained.
The woman, Jeff’s witch, was there, only in this memory, she was unburned. She talked to Henry and pointed him to Wiseman. Her weird eyes didn’t match, and, though this was only memory, she saw Cassie! The woman smiled, a grin that was not at all friendly, barring too many teeth. Show me Henry, damn you! The vision skipped ahead and there was a quiet street. Not a soul around. The fire came from everywhere at once. The gaze was a motion sick, jarring ride through hurried glances and flight. She’d run away. She’d not made it to safety. How the ever-loving fuck was this woman even alive?
The vision faded to black and Cassie thought the woman was chuckling or maybe crying. Cassie dug her crutch painfully into her armpit and left without saying goodbye. Jeff was playing a dangerous game keeping this thing around. She didn’t worry the woman would tell Jeff about her. Intuition told Cassie this thing kept secrets. There was an element of risk though, so she contemplated telling Jeff first. She could imagine how it would go. I was—and may still be—carrying a supernatural being and the ghost of my boyfriend. We sometimes start fires and have killed thousands of people. Still want to nurse me back to health?
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVA WAS IN Eden, yet trapped deep within her own mind. She’d taken a road trip with kind Samaritans, made it to the city, but as soon as she’d entered, Eva had a panic attack of a magnitude beyond anything she’d ever experienced. She ditched her new friends and ran. Eva hadn’t made it far when she lost it. Anxiety crept in a crescendo of fear up her body, emanating from her stomach in the worst cramps. Then, when she couldn’t bear it anymore, Eva lost consciousness.
Eva, where are you, Eva? Shit. Fuck. Shit. I can’t wake up! Though trapped in a corner of her mind, Eva knew she was moving around outside. Her dark other drove their body through a feast of sensuality. Eva was kept locked out. She railed in her cocoon. When she mustered the strength to surface, knowledge came to her of her actions and the shame overwhelmed her, sending her back into a tumult of crisis, back to the cocoon. She had never been in control. The thing had manipulated her to get off the island and into this place. Eva knew this was true, but she couldn’t fathom why.
It didn’t have to use her. It could have found its own way across the water, across the country. It took delight in her misery. It enjoyed setting her up
with false security only for it to come crashing down. It was a manipulator, but there was something more. Did it get tired? Did it need her to be awake so it could sleep? Had she truly asserted self control when she decided to leave the island and the cunt was taking credit? The answers eluded Eva. As she got close to understanding the thing, her mind rebelled.
Saxophone screams, elephant shrieks, and the hammer of her own heart. Blisters of emotion bubbled and ripped open, streaming out the sour misery of an untreated infection. She couldn’t wake up from this bad dream. Her choices hung around her like a homework assignment, marked up in red, showing all the errors she’d made. Stupid, foolish mistakes. The worst was how confident she’d been crossing the threshold—a door to this magical place where everything would be ok, except it wasn’t. Eva’s illusion of control had been ripped away by the mighty force within her. She was shunted downward and inward in her consciousness.
The thing above relished giving her pieces of their conquests. These things—these horrors—she ignored. There were better things to do. She watched movies. The reel-by-reel of her life. Imagination filled in some of the gaps. In this pit, Eva had her whole memories. She visualized them in an app catalog of home movies. She could scroll and double click to see anything she wanted, including memories of what she’d been doing during her blackouts. There had to be a clue in this knowledge. Some weapon she could use to do battle to free herself.
Eva had been picked by Black Star, conditioned for merger with this thing. They were never trying to cure her cataplexy. They’d set her up with drugs that accelerated her mind and altered her senses to see into another world. The alien dimension had been populated by monsters, but only one had found her. A jealous thing that didn’t know how to feel anything but sexual excitement, pain, fury, and death.
It victimized her. Even if there was some part of Eva—some subconscious area of her mind that resonated with these urges—she wouldn’t have acted on them. This thing didn’t remove inhibitions, it imposed its own appetites. It was a rapist. She also knew it was a murderer. There’d been so many murders and she was there for them all.