What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose)

by Beaumont, Delany

  I have to spit, hock, hack out whatever’s in my mouth. It must be the blood, plasma, bile—whatever bodily fluids are held in Moira’s dead-white arms. It lies like a thick syrup pooled beneath my tongue.

  I scream at myself—

  Don’t think about it. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the horror of what you’ve just done.

  There’s something gummy, greasy, indescribably bitter smeared across my lips, oozing from my chin.

  I swipe at this thick goo desperately with the backs of my hands, the sleeves of my coat. Contagion. I’ve tasted it. I’ve bitten deep into it now like a poison apple. If my father’s gift to me, his inoculation, has any effect at all, this will surely be the test of it.

  Ceremony of blood.

  I’ve tasted Moira’s blood.

  Her blood in my mouth. But perhaps not mixing with my blood. I can spit it out like snake’s venom.

  I’m sure now that Moira will kill me. Nothing will stop her. To see me die—a painful, gruesome, satisfying death—will become her holy grail.

  Must get out, past the ring of light. Escape into the dark.

  Without conscious thought, I know exactly what I’m going to do. There’s a motorcycle right in front of me and no one—not Asia or Bodie or Milo or Moira—between me and it. Just past the bright glare of its single headlight are handlebars, wheels, a seat, an idling engine—all of it ready and waiting, so close to me.

  The shock still affects me, a muffling around the edges of my senses—sounds indistinct, lights blurred.

  I can hesitate. I can wait another second, letting the strain, the confusion, the lights, my fatigue get to me and it would all be over. They’d have me tight in their clutches.

  But you won’t be beaten. I shout the words out inside my head. You will push yourself, force yourself to keep going until your very last breath.

  Stop now and that’s it. No second chance.

  I sprint past the light and swing myself onto the seat, clasp the handgrips tight, twist the throttle toward me and feel the bike thrum with life beneath me. Its power revives me, brings me back to myself, kicking my senses alive.

  My mind starts working faster, fixes instantly on the little experience with riding I possess.

  I pull free a memory of what my father taught me. For a few years he owned a motorcycle until my worried mother made him get rid of it. He took me on secret rides when he was home—if my mother was gone and the weather was nice.

  And a few times, just in the long drive leading from our house to the main road, he let me sit in front of him, explained the controls to me, let me do what I’m doing now. Let me kick back the kickstand and, with his feet still on the ground walking the bike, let me inch forward a few yards at a time with only my hands on the controls.

  And on a few precious occasions, when I was a little older, he taught me more. Let me ride slowly down the drive, shifting into a higher gear, my father always perched behind me, an arm around my waist, watching with his chin hooked over my shoulder.

  This time it’s my feet alone keeping the bike up, no one looking over my shoulder. No helmet on my head, no sunny day outside, no familiar drive. Just a cold, brutal, rain-slicked city haunted by creatures once human. All that the blood of our parents has left behind.

  The rest happens in an instant. The memories I have are automatic and flow directly into my hands, my feet, allow me to get the bike moving, turn away from the circle.

  I know they’re almost on me. I can hear their cries above the bike’s buzz-saw whine as it accelerates. Even though they’re moving fast, it’s like they’ve deliberately given me a few extra seconds to see what happens. Any one of them could jump me, knock me from the bike but they don’t. Maybe they’re surprised. Maybe they assume I won’t get far.

  One of them is screaming at me, almost on me, but I listen only for my father’s voice, do what he told me to do, relive what we did together. I’m able to squeeze the clutch and shift into gear without killing the engine. I twist the throttle hard. The bike jerks forward and I manage to stay upright.

  I shift again, almost kill the engine, going far too fast for the gear I’m in. The engine wails like it’s about to snap.

  There’s a path cleared through some of the debris. The Riders have made paths through much of this section of the city, large enough for the bikes, sometimes for a van or truck. I keep going, looking for an intersection with another large street, not wanting to get cut off, blocked, cornered.

  I turn, start to slide, straighten the bike out, my father’s voice still speaking calmly in my ear. In the street I’ve crossed into there is a little more space. I’m able to accelerate in short bursts down to the end of the block. I slow to look back over my shoulder, part of my mind screaming, Don’t look back. Don’t look back. There are lights in the near distance, closing in. This city is theirs. And they know I won’t get far.

  Slow, turn another corner, accelerate.

  Objects before me snap into my field of vision with no forewarning like obstacles in a dream. Everything is dreamlike now, moving too fast and too slow. I could be sleeping, my actions automatic, my conscious mind smothered by sheer instinctive will, a force that protects me from realizing just how much danger I’m in. A bad wreck would be worse than being caught by the Riders—I could be mangled, my body ruined. I’m like a tightrope walker—think about what I’m doing too much and I will fall.

  I slow, swerve, avoid a wreck that nearly blocks the road. The path through the refuse narrows abruptly but I keep on as fast as I can, the bike shrieking beneath me, burning black oil that makes it hard to breathe. I want to shift but keep having to slow and I don’t want to stall. I’m amazed at how well I’m doing, how far I’ve gotten. Maybe the Black Riders are, too.

  I make it to the end of the block, slow and turn the bike in another direction, speed up again, not caring where I go as long as I can keep going, as long as the headlights of the Black Riders aren’t visible, aren’t in front of me—

  And in the middle of the street is an object I can’t avoid. A fire escape tumbled down in huge iron pieces. A rusted metal cage claiming the whole width of the street like something an enormous prehistoric bird was kept in, piles of metal railings and ladder steps lying on their sides, filling every inch of space my headlight reveals.

  I can’t avoid it, this looming pile of metal. I swerve sharply but there’s nowhere to go, the bike tipping on its side, slicing through a puddle, waves of muddy water plastering the front of me, blasting into my face. The bike slides out from under me, wraps itself into the middle of the bars and railings. Bike metal and fire escape metal tangle like spaghetti strands.

  I continue my slide but stop short, avoid being dragged along with the bike into the heart of the iron fire escape cage. The whine of the motor dies away. There’s a choking, burbling sound like the bike is dying, drowning.

  I try to get up but my right leg, the same one I hurt before, refuses to support me. I start to crawl, wanting to get away from the scene of the crash, an image in my mind of a fireball explosion but there is no explosion, just a back tire spinning, whining against an iron spike until it slows to a wobble and everything is still, silent.

  How far away the Black Riders are I don’t know. But I may still have some time.

  Four

  I need a place to hide.

  A safe place for the rest of the night.

  My right leg aches and I limp along, unable to run, shuffling like a zombie, good foot forward and dragging the other.

  I’m certain I’m close to the river. The fog is cotton-thick, a swirl of droplets suffusing the air, icicle cold against the bruised skin of my face. With the fog is a cold sea smell which must be from that deep black ribbon of water flowing through the center of Raintree.

  Before me is a side street so choked with refuse it’s pretty much impassable. I have to turn sideways, work myself in. The Riders can’t reach me here. Not on their bikes. I feel my way to a cluster of overflowing trash
bins and boxes, wedge myself in behind them and hunker down.

  I’m like a wounded animal who’s crawled off to die. I only want to protect myself long enough to prevent predators from intruding on my final moments of life. When whatever feral creature is out there discovers my lifeless body, it can do what it wants with it. But it has to be lifeless.

  The roar of a motor only blocks away rips into the silence. I squeeze deeper behind the wall of trash, boots crunching glass, blind hands feeling all around. My hands become slick with a layer of sticky gunk I can’t wipe away on the fabric of my pants.

  My movements bring out a busy rustling, a scuttle through the debris only inches from my feet. It’s not a loud, panicked thrashing but distinct and sure, working its way toward me—unmistakably the sound of another living presence.

  I reach for my absent rifle as I have so many times before and curse that it’s not there. Find a stick, a length of pipe. I grope through the trash with my sticky hands. Maybe it’s a small animal, a raccoon, an opossum, more scared of me than I am of it. But it doesn’t seem frightened. Keeps burrowing, tunneling through the trash. Close enough now to sink sharp little teeth into my leg.

  Frenzied to get away from this thing, I shove free of the refuse, drag my bad leg part way across the street and smack face-first the opened rear door of a delivery van. Ignore the pain, keep moving. Heaving myself past all obstructions, fingers scraping jagged metal, splintered wood, the shards of hard plastic electronics casings. My body pinging back and forth like the silver ball in a pinball machine until I reach the opposite end of this alley.

  Here I’m rewarded with a bit of open sky and moonlight that allows me to make out a street of brick buildings ahead—and the underside of a bridge looming up over everything just beyond.

  I was right—I am almost at the river’s edge. I consider finding a pocket of space somewhere deep inside of one of these buildings to hide in but I’m scared I’ll be trapped in a back room with only one way out. The Riders could be anywhere, probably watching me right now, laughing as this battered, filthy guttersnipe takes her final few steps of what she thinks is freedom.

  So tired. The adrenaline, the urgency of fleeing, fleeing, fleeing, has trickled away, has left me hollowed out, weak. Somewhere warm to lay down, a dry piece of furniture where I can sleep for a while, an hour or two—each building I see holds its promise.

  But I ignore the temptation and keep on, keep dragging myself like a crippled robot whose programming won’t let it quit even though it’s badly mangled. It’s safer to stay outside, I know that.

  Take shelter out-of-doors. Avoid becoming trapped. Wait out the night.

  The bridge, hide below the bridge.

  Let the chill fog keep me awake.

  At the first light of day cross back over the river. Return to the Orphanage, to the remnants of my family. To Aiden, the boy who’s never spoken a word to me but for whose life I did all this to try to save.

  The bridge above me looks so familiar. I know I’ve stood in this street before. There’s an enormous shadowy opening below the bridge, crisscrossed with cement columns, space enough to shelter hundreds of people from the rain.

  And I remember—my mother taking me to a crowded, noisy open-air market that filled this space every weekend for some last-minute Christmas shopping. It was on one of our infrequent trips to Raintree, the last holiday season when anybody bothered to go shopping. I can still see them—row upon row of booths with merchants selling hand-crafted goods. Chinese calligraphy, pottery, handmade soaps and lotions, tie-dyed shirts, the smell of spices and frying meats from food carts.

  Just a hollow space now, everything gone but what I see in my memory.

  “Honey, look at this. Do you think grandma would like it?”

  Mom holds up a small, bright yellow tea pot, a purple butterfly perched on a stem of grass painted and glazed on its side.

  I shrug. “Sure, I guess.”

  “You’re not being much help.”

  “You know what she likes,” I say. I’m watching a boy across the way who’s with two friends, his arms crossed, laughing carelessly, acting like he owns the world. But he’s staring at me, even points at me. Smiles when he catches my eye.

  My mother nudges me. “What about this?” She holds up a ceramic liquid soap dispenser. Then she notices what’s caught my attention. “Now, now. I think we better keep walking.” But she’s laughing as she says this. I blush and turn away from the boys, tuck in my chin and lead the way in the opposite direction, embarrassed.

  She catches up with me, grabs my hand and tugs it gently to slow me to her stride. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she says. “You’ve got more than enough time for all that. Plenty of fish in the sea.”

  My foot crunches on something. Maybe a fragment of that tea pot that was for sale once long ago. Only trash and debris left. And maybe a place to hide.

  I force myself on, bad leg throbbing, to where the underside of the bridge slopes down to meet a cement bulwark and the open area ends. I’m deliberately not thinking about what could be hiding in all this shadowy space because I’m taking a chance that no one—or thing—is here. There’s a narrow little aperture here, under the lowest end of bridge, almost a crawlspace. People caught up in the disaster must have sought shelter here. There are boxes, crates, shopping carts arranged like little forts, strewn with rags, tarps and tattered blanket.

  On hands and knees I crawl back to the wall of the bulwark, pull packing crates in front of me to hide behind. I try to make myself comfortable but my leg aches and there’s a stench here that is almost overpowering—urine, rot, mold. But it’s drier than the open street, moldy-damp but endurable. And there’s a bridge right above me to cross in the morning.

  And I wait, trying to keep my eyes open, trying to ignore the pain and the cold. The dirt and the smell. Trying most of all not to keep thinking of my mother and of that friendly, crowded world we once walked through.

  Part Seven

  The Return

  One

  As tired as I am, sleep is impossible.

  Beyond where I’m hidden at the tail end of the bridge, there’s nothing to see—a black open space—so I let my eyes drift shut. I rock back and forth on a numbed behind that rests on thin cardboard, arms wrapped tight around my shins, head sideways on my knees.

  Despite closed eyes, despite my nestled head, I know I haven’t slept for a single moment all night.

  I know because each passing minute is an eternity. An eternity full of sounds—the patter of rain, far off animals howling, wind snapping at the edges of a plastic tarp. The sound of water drip-drip-dripping from a broken pipe. I count the drops as if they were the ticks of a clock, sixty drops marking a sixty second span. In this way I’m certain at least one more minute has passed.

  The drops haven’t lulled me to sleep. I’ve heard and counted every one.

  And if even once I do come close to sleep, my mind starting to drift, less and less aware of the sounds and the cold night air that makes my teeth chatter and my nose run and the way my banged up leg still throbs, I am shocked permanently awake when I hear the Black Riders, no motorcycle warning me of their approach.

  Footsteps splashing across damp pavement. Whispers.

  The Riders sound confused, irritated. I make out a few words—moron, idiot, what the hell?—as they bicker. It’s as if they’ve been following a trail, reached its end and failed to find what they were certain they’d find.

  They fling stones into the open space under the bridge I once strolled with my mother past stalls laden with handcrafts. Then two or three motorcycles arrive, fan out into the area, high headlight beams darting into the far corners, even flashing across the crate that hides me. “God, it stinks here,” I hear one of them say—only a few feet away.

  There’s laughter. “Rats nest,” another says.

  And then it’s over. I’m bracing for the moment when I’m pulled loose from another hiding place but the bikes make one more swe
ep and roar off into the distance. I listen and listen but hear no more whispering, no other footsteps. I’m amazed they’ve given up so easily.

  The Riders sudden appearance and disappearance leaves me wired—eyes wide, head cocked, unable to do anything but listen and stare into the dark. It makes waiting for daybreak endless.

  Pass, time, pass.

  Please.

  As long as I’ve waited for it, when a little light finally makes its way to where I’m hiding, it takes time for me to realize it’s even there. It’s subtle, seeping slowly into the space under the bridge—a shade less black and a shade more gray.

  I shake my head, kick away the crate that’s protected me with my good leg and look around, eyes able to take in much more than they were only minutes before.

  My hiding spot under the lowest end of the bridge was someone’s shelter once. There’s that faint odor of urine and an almost wine-like sweetness. Broken bottles, a blanket stiff with dirt, the ground beneath me studded with bottle caps and fragments of glass.

  And then I find myself staring at something that confuses me, doesn’t make sense—a neat row of little knobs poking out of the ground. It dawns on me, slowly—they’re the white chalk sticks of skeletal fingers, reaching out, half-buried in the soil. And just beyond—bones dusted with gray-green spores, sticking up like a pair of twisted straws, their ends shattered.

  Fragments of a severed arm, torn years ago from someone’s body. All night they lay only inches from me.

  I try to stand but smack my head against the underside of the bridge and spill forward onto my hands and knees. I crawl free from the hiding space as fast as I can, the image in mind of other things lurking near me in the dimness—unheard vermin scuttling through the dirt. Hairless tails, pink eyes, yellow-sharp teeth.

  Just past the crate I’d kicked away, I stop, still on all fours, try to catch my breath. I push myself to my haunches, try to lift myself to my feet. Put a little weight on my bad leg to test it. Take a look around.