The deputy questions Bill and Mary. Then Viktor and Dierdra. Caleb and Jack tell their tale in truncated form: Something came down from the trees and killed Patrick. Strangled him. Snapped his neck. The deputy writes “unknown assailant” in his flip pad. He promises to follow through on whatever reports need filing. “You know what happened on the streets. You saw it. I can’t assure you...” He shrugs.
The coroner’s assistants slide their hands under the blue blanket that holds Patrick’s body. Catarina puts up an unsteady hand. “Let us say goodbye.” She reaches forward and pulls back the bit of cloth that covers Patrick’s bruised face. It’s horrible. But this is their friend in all his finality.
Catarina closes her eyes. She lets her nose rest against Patrick’s. Kisses Patrick’s cheek. She turns to Jack. Doesn’t wipe the tear that works its way down her face.
Jack puts his hands around Patrick’s head so that his palms cup his childhood pal’s cheeks. He whispers. “I’m going to kill them.”
Catarina reaches for Jack’s hand. He takes his place at her side.
Caleb’s small hands trace Patrick’s face. His little heart is heavy. Not just because he’s saying goodbye—because he’s sure Patrick is only the first of the Tribe who will fall.
He joins Jack and Catarina. Both rest a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder.
The coroners hoist Patrick’s body up. They carry him into the black body bag. Bill and Mary follows the men to the street without bothering to even glance at anyone else.
The deputy looks to the floor. To the remaining Tribe. Seems about to say something, but stops himself. He follows the O’Connors outside.
Then it’s silent. Not uncomfortable. Just there.
Jack clears his throat. “We’re going to bed now. Please don’t wake us.”
The parents hold their words.
Caleb says, “We love you.” And he means it.
Dierdra squeezes Caleb so hard he fears it might finally be the thing to kill him. She pulls back. Tears fall. She hugs Jack. Exhales once and heavy into her eldest son’s shoulder. He hugs her back, but keeps a slight distance from her without meaning to. He hopes she sees in his face the assurance that everything will be all right. Even though it’s more lie than promise.
These aren’t “goodbye” hugs.
But they are close.
Viktor and Elie wait. Watch.
They don’t want to risk the chance that hugs from the children do mean “goodbye.”
Chapter 19: Rest
Caleb wanders into his room. He wishes Zarifa was with him.
Not for sex. Just for the company. The emotional presence of someone for whom he feels deep love and who has an understanding of what he survived.
The posters of cartoon characters in his room don’t have any answers. Bugs and Daffy and Wile E. Coyote. There are a few Batman comics on the floor near his bed. He glances at the action figures and the Star Wars and Star Trek models on his desk.
He hates it all.
These are a child’s things. A child’s decorations.
He doesn’t have the luxury of being some goddamn child. Not anymore. It infuriates him.
Caleb stomps over to his desk. Seizes a Star Wars model. An X-Wing fighter, which he’d spent hours and hours putting together, making sure the decals and paint were just right, airbrushing exhaust burns near the engine openings...
He snatches it up. Hates it. This stupid little kid thing.
He walks over to one of his windows. Pauses to remember that it was in this window, that the dead face had stared at him. He pushes the glass up. Feels the chilly air outside rush in. Turns the model in his hand. Tries to figure out just how far he can throw the fuckin toy once he lifts the screen.
He stops.
The Engine clicks. Turns over.
He looks at the model. Sees all the work he’d put into it. A damn fine model. Looks good. Professional. He has every reason to look at this plastic replica with nerdy pride.
This is dumb. This is a hissy fit.
So much for not being a child anymore.
Caleb’s not the old Caleb. That much is true. He isn’t the twelve-year-old who panicked over what his classmates thought. Or the Caleb who worried about an inopportune boner.
Shit happens.
But that doesn’t mean he should forget or ignore who he used to be. There’s fun there. There’s love there. It’s still part of who he is. It’s just no longer all that he is.
Caleb tosses himself into bed. Pulls the sheets and blanket up around his neck. He turns the television on. Ignores what the news has to say.
Cartoon Network makes a lot more sense right now.
* * *
Catarina closes the door to Jack’s room.
The space is sparse. Bereft of paintings or posters. Except one that features a squinting, pissed off Clint Eastwood. His bed has no frame. The blanket is black with white sheets. Simple.
A laptop sits on his old mahogany desk alongside scattered papers. Empty packs of cigarettes. An empty bottle of Jameson.
On Jack’s bookshelf, it’s all pulp fiction and horror novels and biology texts. Lovecraft. Wells. Wyndham. Dick. Barker. Matheson. The Dark Tower series. Darwin. Dawkins. Wilson. A dozen titles by Elmore Leonard.
By Jack’s television, there are movies like The Thing. Alien. Aliens. The Mist. Pacific Rim. Westerns like The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. The Wild Bunch. Gran Torino is there for good measure.
Jack undresses at the foot of his bed. Slow. Pained. He arches his shoulders and sheds his bloody jacket. He lets it fall to the ground. His smirk falters.
Catarina. Here in his room.
Exhaustion overrides the excitement.
Catarina puts her hands on her hips. She shakes her head. “What am I gonna do with you, Cowboy?” She approaches his broken form. He’s both boyish and tragic.
Jack stares. Eyelids heavy. She’s laid claim to him in an economy of words. “Dunno, Cowgirl.”
She takes his hat off. Unbuckles his gun belt.
Jack allows it. Even though he doesn’t like the idea of being disarmed.
Catarina doesn’t let the hat or the heavy weapon fall. She sets them down on the desk. Caring ever. The woman’s touch she loathes having.
Jack plops his ass down on his unremarkable bed. Winces.
Catarina crawls behind him over the covers. Her hands work at his waist. She tugs his undershirt. He lifts his arms. Lets her pull the fabric over his head. He wants to squeal when the cloth is ripped away from the drying blood on his shoulder. But he doesn’t make a sound.
He feels her hands again. Warm. On the back of his neck. Then on his shoulder. Then near his wound. He hears her moan in sorrow and pity. He feels her lips on the back of his neck. On his shoulder. Near his wound.
She leans away from him. The warmth is gone for a second. She shifts. Pulls her shirt over her head. Around her beautiful hair. Jack hears the sound again of fabric, stiffer this time. Her bra falling from her shoulders in quiet whispers.
Catarina curls her arms around him. One across his waist. One across his chest. She feels the thrum of his heavy heart. The pounding.
Jack feels the heat of her chest against his back. The smoothness of her skin.
She’s at his ear. “I love you, too.”
Jack turns. He meets her eyes and holds them. His hand reaches up to her cheek. Caresses it. He grips the back of her neck. Pulls her lips to his. Their mouths open. Their tongues explore.
Catarina lies back. Her head falls against the pillows. She covers herself. A reflex.
Jack sees the swell of her breasts under her arms. Traces the outline of her body. The way her midsection curves in under her ribs and then curves back out near her hips at the top of her jeans.
He pulls them off. Pushes his own Wrangler jeans over his ankles.
They kicked the rest of their clothes away.
Jack eyes the bruises painted on Catarina. The wounds. Small cuts that stitch their way ac
ross her skin like zigzags of red lightning. The punishment her body took in their night of hell. Things he needs to recognize, even though he’s made out to be the damaged hero.
She’s just as goddamn tough.
He runs his fingers along her wounded side. Goose bumps rise on Catarina’s flesh. He looks to her eyes. Looks to see if she wants him to stop.
She doesn’t.
Jack moves closer. Catarina lets her legs fall open. He bends and kisses her. Below her navel. Her soft hairs tickle his lips. He tries to control his breathing. His mouth touches her. Delicate. Almost a tease. He puts his hands on her hips. She allows his fingers to glide upward.
Catarina uncrosses her arms. She holds the back of Jack’s head.
He feels her for the first time.
After so many years of wanting to know and to love.
They’ve earned this.
Catarina brings Jack up to her. He kisses her breasts. She gasps. He slides a hand underneath her. Around her waist. She drags her nails across his back. She draws up the smallest amount of blood.
There’s a violence in them they can’t escape.
She lets go of his head and reaches down. Pulls him. Rocks against him.
They turn and twist.
She buries her face in his neck. Kisses. Bites.
Catarina leans back. Jack runs his hand along her chest.
She clasps his neck. She shudders.
They bury their cries in each other’s flesh.
They hold each other.
Nothing else matters.
They fall asleep happy.
Chapter 20: Breakfast of Champions
The Tribe eats breakfast fourteen hours later.
It’s only odd for its initial normalcy.
Everyone’s chatty.
Dierdra hurries from Caleb’s plate to Jack’s to Catarina’s. The Tribe mother piles pancakes. Sausage. Bacon. Butter and syrup flow. She decides that the young soldiers need their calories. Decides that if this is all gonna happen, well, shit, it’s gonna happen.
Elie jokes in an offhanded way about how Catarina and Jack need to have themselves a real date. Viktor chides Caleb for knocking food off his plate and stuffing too much into his mouth.
Typical conversations. Gentle jokes at one another’s expense.
All great efforts to pretend that things are all right.
Jack wipes his mouth. His plate is clear. Licked clean. He tosses an arm around his mother. Kisses her cheek. Thanks her. Puts his dishes in the sink. Sits back down with a grunt. Sets a brass gun cleaning kit on the table—something he asked his dad to pick up while he was passed out.
He pulls the Colt Peacemaker from his side. Lays a clean towel from the sink under it on the table. Pops the side gate to pull the bullets out. He pulls the hammer back. Two clicks to free the cylinder. Then he takes the retention pin out. Starts pushing three-deep patches of cotton through the barrel and the cylinders of his Colt.
The gun and its maintenance are how “normal” can be defined for Jack.
Dierdra listens as Jack sets each bullet to the side. As he lifts the Colt’s cylinder out. Winces as her son shows himself to be a sudden expert at weapons care.
Elie and Viktor watch as well. Impressed. Dumbfounded. Terrified.
Caleb and Catarina pay their kin little heed.
Jack is best left alone.
Catarina and Caleb are starving. They eat slower than Jack, but with the same passion. And after their plates are clear, they clean their places. Thank Dierdra. Each leaves a kiss on her cheek.
They sit.
Caleb scribbles in his note pad. Works on where they can gain access to Three’s underground chamber. The monster’s close. Underground. But how far down? The pad itself is something he appropriated from Viktor’s desk. It makes him look like a manic junior detective.
Catarina chats with her father. Brief. Curt. Then she disappears into the basement. She emerges ten minutes later. Declares, “I need to get to a hardware store. Or any place that’ll have camping gear. Survival shit.”
Elie cocks an eyebrow at her.
She says, “We have to prepare. Backpacks. Climbing gear. First aid kits. Rope. Flares.
“And I need a blade.”
Caleb looks up from his notepad. “She does.”
Jack nods.
* * *
Viktor pleads with his eldest son. “Talk to me.”
Jack cleans his machine. The Colt is an extension of himself. His life hinges on its smooth operation. It needs attention. He doesn’t have time to fart around.
Catarina talks with Elie in the living room.
Caleb has disappeared to check map archives online.
Jack snaps the Colt’s loading gate shut. Gives the gun a visual inspection. Spins it around his finger. Holsters it in its home at his side. “What’s up, pop?”
They’re the only two left in the kitchen now.
Viktor wrings his hands together.
A teenager going through changes. Becoming another person. Puberty. Hormones. That shit Viktor expected. Anticipated. Lived through himself. This? This he has no idea what to do with. He wants to try anyway.
“You need to help me out here, Jack. This is all—” Viktor gestures at the air “—insane.”
Jack agrees. “Sure is.”
Silence then.
Jack says, “I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t exactly give you a guide book on this.”
Viktor palms the tumbler of whiskey in front of him. He swirls the amber liquid around. Throws it down his throat. “Explain some of it. Your mother’s upstairs crying her brains out. She’s convinced you’re on a mad crusade. Shit. I don’t know. We all saw those goddamn things prowling the other night. Hunting people. Killing them. It’s not that we don’t believe you. We do. But—”
“But you don’t quite. I still don’t know what to say—”
“Maybe we just hallucinated all this. It’s not unheard of.”
“We told you what we know, but you’re looking for some other answer. I don’t have one. None of us do. Yeah, the situation’s fucked. But it ain’t supernatural. We’re after a real creature. You saw an extension of it. We aren’t after gods or ghosts or joining a cult.”
“No, you’re heading off to commune with some ancient monster you think you share a common gene with and that it allows you to hear the building blocks of matter and gives you super powers.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “Fuckin hell, Dad. Every living thing on Earth is a cousin of every other living thing. You goddamn know that. Simple fact of evolution.”
“Try to see this from my perspective.”
“Try to see it from ours. We doesn’t ask for this. We didn’t seek it out. This is reality now, whether we like it or not. I’m not your Jack anymore. Caleb isn’t the same either. We have things we need to do. You can help or you can get out of the way.”
Viktor lowers his eyes. The feeling of losing a son weighs on him. He’d worried about the onset of this feeling when Jack became a teenager years ago. But Jack remained a steadfast and sturdy guy. Hell, the kid had grown up. Not away.
Now old man Svoboda isn’t sure. Jack’s reached a frightening level of militaristic determination over the course of twenty-four hours. Unlike Dierdra, Viktor doesn’t think Jack or Caleb is gonna run off and get themselves killed. The two have shown that they’re more than capable of handling whatever insanity presents itself. But there’s still cause for worry.
Viktor’s concerned that his children no longer needs a father.
That hurts him more than he wants to admit.
He plays the only card he has left, “What can I do to help?”
Chapter 21: Si vis pacem, para bellum
(If you wish for peace, prepare for war)
Viktor drives. He ferries them everywhere.
It’s a day of shopping. An expensive one at that. Bankrolled by both the Senior Svoboda and the Senior Schrieber.
The first stop is DF Brothers Sports Center on N
ew Utrecht Avenue. Damn near the only place in Brooklyn where everything the Tribe needs can be bought: Ammunition, a machete, climbing and survival equipment. Then they’re off to Duane Reade on Eighty-sixth for water, caffeine, Gatorade, first aid kits, gauze, iodine and rubbing alcohol. Finally, the ACE Hardware on Fifth Avenue for bolt cutters.
The Svoboda basement is their staging area. And now, it is an armory.
Viktor, Elie, Caleb, Catarina and Jack gather at the worktable. The fluorescent lights above buzz like angry insects. Bathe their faces and gear in an antiseptic light blue color.
They have heavy packs. Red chemical sticks. Harnesses. Carabiners. Belay devices. Rope. A machete for Catarina. Caleb’s crowbar. An astounding amount of .45 Long Colt ammo for Jack.
The kids wear khaki cargo pants. Corcoran combat boots with steel toes. White Under Armour shirts beneath black tactical vests with a lot of pockets.
They look like little Special Forces operators.
At the center of the table is a map of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Caleb leans over it while standing on a small step ladder. He points. Directs everyone’s gaze like a field general.
He taps an area he’s circled with a Sharpie, near Exit 2 on the Belt Parkway. It’s right underneath the shadow of the Verrazano Bridge. Caleb says, “Where the Hudson River meets the shore here, there’s a drain. A big one. We wait until it gets dark. Hop the guard rail. Head in.”
Elie says, “And you know where you’re going?”
Caleb taps his noggin. “I know where Three is. I can hear him all the time now.”
Viktor says, “Okay. Where is he, then?”
Caleb made a noise of exasperation. “Dad...”
“Humor me, son.”
“Fine. These things—the Hroza—burrow. That’s how they survived the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. They go down. Below the subways and the tunnels and the water. They stay away from the surface except to feed, or to put out their feelers. This one has obviously been using the sewers for that.”
Elie says, “If it uses the sewers, hell, there’s a manhole down the block. Why not use it yourselves?”
Jack shakes his head. “Too much attention. Cops, idiots, whoever. I don’t really want to meet my end because a goddamn car hits me while I’m dicking around in the middle of the street, considering everything else I’ve survived.”
Emergence Page 13