“They all died because of you.”
He shook his head, unable to comprehend.
“New York, Los Angeles. Atlanta, Denver. All gone,” she said. Her voice fell below a whisper to the point he could barely hear it. “All dead because of you.”
It couldn’t have been his fault. How in the world could it have been?
He dabbed at his face. His cheeks were soaked with tears.
“It’s not my fault,” he whispered.
“Your very birth triggered this string of events. We thought if we found you in time and hid you, we’d be able to change things. I think all we ended up doing was making it worse.”
“The only thing I am faultless in is my own birth, though beyond that, I have known little but suffering. Were I able, I would gladly take it back and wish myself into the ground rather than the womb.”
“My father read the prophecies that foretold of your birth, and he was able to find you before any of the others. Only his followers know of your existence. It’s both for your protection…and our own.” She sighed. “I always thought you’d be able to change things. I thought that here away from the evils of mankind, away from the all-consuming hatred, you wouldn’t be able to feel its pull, and wouldn’t feel the need to bring forth its end.”
She opened the door wider and slipped her girth through. He could feel her in the darkness with him, her form positively trembling.
“I’m sorry we failed you,” she sobbed, no longer able to contain it.
“If I am to blame, how could you have failed me?”
“We should have killed you,” she whispered, staring at the floor, bangs sapped to her tear-dampened cheeks. “Then none of this would have happened. My father…my father and the others got greedy. They wanted what you have. It’s your light. It’s blinding to all who behold it.”
“I am just a boy.”
“You are more than that and you know it.”
“I know nothing but what you’ve taught me.”
“Then all of this is my fault.”
Phoenix listened to her meek crying. He looked to the door, which still stood ajar, then to the bed of straw. He could hardly see her silhouette in the darkness; she would never see him make a move for the sharpened spoon.
He stood there, unable to decide what to do.
In the end, he reached out and took her by the hand. She squeezed it and pulled him to her chest. It was the first time he had ever been held. The feeling was magnificent: her heart beating against his, the heat of her body wrapped around his suddenly trembling form. Her wet tears against the side of his neck. Her pain and fear raced into him electrically, as though a current flowed from her shuddering body.
He could vaguely remember her from his childhood, her voice so much younger, so full of wonder. She used to sit outside his door, though it had been a different basement in a house far away, and tell him stories of life outside his cell. His favorite had been about the cocoon she had found in the bush out back and the vibrant red butterfly that had emerged. He often fancied the darkness his cocoon, from which one day he would arise into whatever lay in wait beyond. He remembered her stories of cars and trains and planes and people and cats and dogs. Everything he knew, he knew because of her. In her own way—though she now feared him, or rather, what she thought him capable of—she loved him. He could sense that as clearly as anything he had ever felt.
“Will you help me leave this place?” he whispered.
She pulled him tighter, in an embrace only a mother might know.
“My father will never allow it,” she sniffed. “He’s too powerful.”
Phoenix wanted to end the hug, to free himself from her arms, but at the same time, he never wanted it to end.
“He’d kill me,” she whispered.
“I don’t want that,” he said, surprised by the truth to the words.
She sniffed back the warm sludge from his neck.
“Can you make the killing stop?” she whispered, the strength finally creeping back into her voice.
“I don’t know.”
Silence.
“You have no idea of the power you possess. You can do anything.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“More man tears,” she whispered. “You told me that in a dream. You said to remind you ‘after the fall.’ What does it mean?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, pushing herself away from him. “Please forgive me.”
“For what?”
He felt cold now away from her heat. It struck him how similar the sensations of cold and alone actually were.
“For touching you,” she said, scurrying toward the door. “May God have mercy on my soul.”
Phoenix shook his head, unable to rationalize anything.
“I’ve wanted to do that since the day we found you,” she said, hurriedly closing the door.
With a click, the lock engaged.
He dropped to his knees in the cold darkness. The room felt so much smaller.
Tears spilled down his cheeks.
VI
Dover, Tennessee
MISSY WAS CRUMPLED IN A HEAP ON THE COUCH, SOBBING, WHEN THE FLOOR began to shake. At first, she thought that it was just her trembling body…until a thunderous report grumbled through the valley. Framed pictures fell from the walls, shattering on impact. The overhead fixtures rattled. Books toppled from their shelves.
When it was all over, the silence in the house was deafening.
“Mare!” she screamed, sitting up quickly and pawing the pooled tears from her wet eyes. She could barely see through the swelling.
He thumped down the stairs, forearms thick with a crusting of blood to match the smears on his face.
“What was that?” he gasped, still holding the crimson sponge he’d been using to try to scrub off the mixture of his father’s blood and his own. He’d tried chest compressions, but all that did was pump blood from his father’s mangled jaw. Rescue breathing hadn’t even been an option as there’d been no way to form a seal over what remained of his father’s mouth. Yet still, he’d tried everything he could think of, breaking ribs and cracking the sternum, until finally he had no choice but to relent with an anguished scream.
The police and paramedics were on their way, though neither appeared to be in much of a hurry. It had only been a few minutes since Missy made the blubbering call, but it felt like eons had passed in the interim. They weren’t supposed to touch the body. They weren’t even allowed to start cleaning the mess. The police still had to investigate the scene, though Missy couldn’t imagine what they thought they might find other than a single bullet somewhere in the spider web-riddled attic.
Mare had closed the door to his father’s bedroom, leaving what remained of their lineage to congeal into the carpet and bedspread.
“I don’t know,” Missy whispered, unable to bring herself to look at her brother.
“I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“Plane crash?”
“Maybe.”
The phone rang. Missy and Mare looked at each other. Neither wanted to answer it. They’d put in a call for Staci at work, but the lady who answered the phone said she hadn’t seen her all day. Neither of them wanted to be the one to have to tell her what happened.
“I got it,” Mare finally said, swallowing hard and swiping his hands on his shorts. He lifted the phone from the cradle, silencing it mid-ring. “Hello?”
He closed his eyes in anticipation of what he was sure was to follow.
“Jason?” he said, recognizing the voice on the other end. “Listen, man, now isn’t the best ti—”
His face crinkled and he looked hurriedly to his sister.
“What?” she asked.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What is it?” Missy nearly screamed.
“No way! What channel?” Mare asked, then covered the phone. “Turn on the tube, sis.”
“What
channel?”
“Any,” he said, then brought the phone back to his lips. “Look, dude, we’ve got problems of our own here.”
“…nothing left of downtown Atlanta,” the panicked voice called from the television, the background redolent with sirens. “The bomb detonated nearly simultaneously with the other three in New York, Los Angeles, and Denver. Casualties are estimated in the millions.”
“Yeah, I’ve got it on,” Mare said into the phone. “Gotta be a hoax… No, my dad, he… Sorry, Jason, I’ve just…just gotta go.”
He dropped the phone onto the cradle with a clatter.
“What’s happening?” he whispered.
On the TV was a static-lined black and white image, flickering like an old newsreel. All they could see at first were treetops framed like skyscrapers against a pale gray sky. The camera bounced up and down as an enormous cloud of smoke arose from the horizon, spreading quickly to either side as it swelled, blocking out the clouds and sun and everything else. It hovered there, roiling, swirling furiously, then exploded outward. The treetops shook violently before all of the leaves and needles were blown from their bowed branches, assaulting the camera like buckshot before the cloud rumbled through, absorbing everything in its wake with a rush of smoke and dust.
“That was footage obtained from our sister station in Savannah,” the reporter said. “Transmitted shortly before we lost all contact. Citizens are asked to stay in their houses and stay off of the roads. If you have a basement, please take your family down there and wait until authorities are able to confirm that it is safe to come back up.”
“The cops aren’t coming,” Mare said, scratching at his blood-knotted arm hairs.
“A state of national emergency has been declared. Please stay off of your phone lines unless it’s an absolute emergency so as not to overload the circuits and help emergency units to be available for those in dire need of help.”
“Aunt Mary lives in Atlanta,” Missy said.
“Lived,” Mare corrected.
A raging wind kicked up outside, the walls and floorboards of the old house groaning in protest. Debris hammered the windows, the wind screaming in through the weakened seals.
“Army and National Guard units are scrambling to get to the sites of the tragedies, while the Red Cross has already begun setting up relief stations in neighboring communities to help the survivors. All medical personnel are asked to join their efforts to treat the thousands of victims expected to show up with mild to severe radiation poisoning and injuries of all kinds.”
“What are we supposed to do, Mare?”
“I…I don’t know. We don’t have a basement…”
“We now go live to the Capitol in Washington D.C. where the President is expected to arrive shortly to brief a stunned nation.”
The image switched to a podium beside an American flag. Various uniformed military bigwigs milled behind, in front of the enormous seal of the President of the United States, while countless reporters fought in front of the camera for seating.
“Get in the closet!” Mare snapped, grabbing Missy by the hand and jerking her toward the front door. He opened the door immediately to the left and shoved her inside.
“What about you?” she screamed.
“I’m right behind you!” Mare shouted as he grabbed the coats and hangers and threw them out onto the floor. He dashed through the living room and kitchen into the garage, slamming into the workbench in his hurry. A mason jar full of nails clattered to the particleboard table, spilling its contents everywhere. He grabbed the staple gun from the shelf by the paint thinner and quickly knelt. Under the worktop was a shelf littered with half-empty gallons of paint, atop which were crumpled several large plastic drop cloths. He snatched them and ran back into the house, throwing them toward the closet, where his sister cringed in the shadows, on his way past and up the stairs.
Without even looking at the closed door to their father’s bedroom, he grabbed the doorknob of the closet beside it and yanked. On the second shelf was a stack of folded blankets, which he pulled to his chest before bounding back down the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Missy sobbed.
“I’ll be right there!”
Hurdling the plastic sheets, he sprinted into the kitchen and turned on the sink, shoving the blankets beneath the stream of water and soaking them thoroughly before cradling them again and hurrying to the closet.
“Get under the blankets!” he yelled, throwing them to the floor in front of his sister with a wet slap.
The front door blew inward, slamming into the open closet door. A flood of leaves and dirt raced in on the wind, scattering across the living room floor. Mare grabbed the drop cloths before the ferocious gale could steal them away and rushed to the closet, fighting to open it against the extraordinary pressure applied by the front door. He slipped inside and the front door slammed the closet door with a bang. Spreading out the plastic sheet, he started stapling it to the doorframe, trying to stretch it tight enough as he went to seal off the doorway behind the shut door. Stapling and stapling, cracking through the shoddy trim, he squeezed the handle over and over until it simply clicked.
Outside the closet he heard the crash of the television falling from its stand.
Tossing the spent stapler into the corner, he dropped to the floor beside Missy, jerking the wet blankets over his hunched shoulders. The water immediately soaked through his clothes, matting his hair to his head. The humidity was unbearable, almost like trying to breathe beneath a lake.
“How did you know to do this?” Missy whispered.
“What makes you think I have any idea what I’m doing?”
He’d meant it to sound like a joke.
“What about dad?” Missy asked. “Are we just supposed to leave him up there?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
She lowered her head, closing her eyes. It was already starting to get hot.
“How long do we have to stay in here?”
“I don’t know if we have to at all. It’s not like the plastic—or even the walls for that matter—will protect us from the radiation, but if there’s some sort of germ warfare going on out there, we just might get lucky.”
Silence descended between them like a curtain, scarred only by their heavy, wet breathing. Missy’s mind conjured an image of Hansel and Gretel in the witch’s oven. It was getting harder and harder to tell whether the wetness covering her was from the blanket or her own perspiration.
The front door banged into the closet door at the wind’s urging.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” Missy whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think we’re going to war now?”
“I’m not sure. For all I know, they could be nuking the entire Middle East right now.”
Missy was quiet for a long moment.
“Is it wrong to hope they do?” she asked, so quietly that at first he’d confused her voice with the wind outside.
“I don’t know,” Mare said. “I hope not, ’cause I hope they nuke’em all.”
“Me, too,” she said softly. “I wish it didn’t have to come to that.”
“Sometimes to save lives, you’ve got to be willing to take them.” He fell silent. “How many people would have been saved today if we’d already blasted them all to hell?”
“That’s genocide.”
Mare nodded beneath the blanket, loosing streams of sweat from where they’d been welled against his brows.
She placed her hand on his and squeezed it tightly.
“We’ll get through this,” he said, trying to keep his voice firm as the tears finally came. “You and me, Miss. We’ll be fine.”
“It isn’t just us that I’m worried about,” she whispered. “What’s going to happen to all of us? What’s going to happen to our souls?”
VII
Eugene, Oregon
THE LAMP ON THE STAND BEHIND RAY FLICKERED. THE DISC IN THE CD PLAYER skipped
almost imperceptibly. Outside, the bug zapper flared with a bright blue light from a surge of power.
“What was that?” Tina asked. Her nose and cheeks were already blushed from the alcohol.
“I think I felt the ground shake,” April said.
“Couldn’t have,” Rick said. “We’re too far north of the fault lines. Must have been a truck passing or something.”
“I didn’t hear a truck,” Tina said.
“You’re halfway gone anyway. A truck could have parked on your forehead and you’d have missed it.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Rick,” Ray spat.
“I think she’s right,” Darren said. “I felt something too.”
“You’re just saying that because you’ve got a thing for her,” Rick said.
“No, really.” Darren rose from the couch. He swayed momentarily, fighting to regain his equilibrium. “I’m positive I felt something.”
“Have you forgotten this is Oregon?” Rick snapped. “When was the last time—?”
“Wait,” Jill said, holding up her hand. She closed her eyes to focus her auditory senses. “Listen…”
Ray turned down the music.
There was the snapping and popping of bugs frying outside, crackling like kernels of corn in hot oil. The wind had risen as well, whistling past the eaves, swinging the blue light like a lantern on a trolley. Dry leaves crinkled, tumbling along the shingles, racing down the gutters. Another sound lurked beneath, like a bass line under a guitar solo, a resonant thunder vibrating beneath the patter of rain blowing against the siding like pebbles.
There was something else, nearly indistinguishable from the wailing wind.
Someone was crying.
Jill rose and turned around, jerking open the curtains behind the couch.
Mandy Lewis, easily identifiable, even from this distance, by the layer of jet black hair beneath her almost white locks, was crumpled on the lawn in front of the sorority house across the street, face buried in her hands. Liz and Sarah stood over her, looking helplessly at each other momentarily before kneeling beside their friend and wrapping their arms around her.
The Fall Page 17