Palimpsest (Book 3): Coins for Charon

by P. J. Post

  I’m sitting in the lawn chair. Pixie is lying across my feet. Jem and Samantha are bandaging my arms. I feel like a goddamned mummy, didn’t we just do this shit? Keats and Holly are talking about how best to crawl over the fallen tower, well, Holly is listening mostly.

  Shinji’s pissed he’s being ignored, and even more hurt that Holly Hawk pretty much dumped his ass without so much as a fuck you. She’ll never forgive him for how everything went down last night.

  He should have had her back, no matter what — that was his moment, and he blew it — forever and ever, amen.

  Who knew cutting someone’s arm off bought such loyalty?

  The shitty part is that I think Shinji is beyond ever trusting again.

  “You tell that fat fuck what’s what, Holly!” I shout at her.

  She grins, wincing.

  “Give it time, not much longer now,” I say, trying to be encouraging. Her smile might always be lopsided from here on out, but that doesn’t prevent her from lighting up my day.

  I’ve thought about it, and I’m done hiding shit; it’s way past time to be honest with the family. Poor Keats is just trying to ignore it, me, the girls and the rest of the Magic Fuckery Show going on around him.

  Welcome to the end of the world, Keats, you might want to buckle up, the ride’s about to get bumpy.

  Samantha ties off the last bandage before slipping her mittens back on. I hope they have coats across the street, these sweatshirts and t-shirts aren’t getting it done, and I’m getting pretty fucking cold.

  “Get your shit, let’s do this,” I say.

  “Are you ready?” Samantha asks.

  “Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s going to be dark soon enough. We need to get to the river before it does.”

  The fires are burning out around us, the acrid stench of chemicals and burnt plastics mix with the smell of oak and maple, Christmas fireplaces. Eventually, the surviving Button Eyes will just walk out of town. There’s got to be hundreds of thousands of them still milling about, maybe a million, with the snow they look like a shag carpet come to life.

  It’s creepy as fuck.

  Regardless, we can’t let them wander off.

  Samantha lays a mittened hand against my cheek and forces me to look into her eyes. “Lane, one step at a time.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll figure out how to blow up Freemont, but let’s get across the street first, okay?”

  “Okay,” I whisper as I take her hand from my cheek, and then grab my backpack and motion for everyone to follow.

  We line up along a strip of roof that’s still, more or less, safe to walk on. It’s level anyway. And it’s close enough that we can simply step right from the roof to the tower. This is still going to be tough, but we don’t have to jump for it.

  We have seven kids and a not so little puppy to help across, so that makes three trips, four?

  Christ.

  “Should we test it first?” Samantha asks.

  I nod and grab Jem under the arms. “Ready to do some testing?”

  She grins.

  “That’s not what I meant…Lane!” She glares at me.

  “What?” I ask as innocently as possible, still holding Jem in the air.

  “Whatever,” Samantha says, shaking her head.

  I set her down on the roof, and grab the empty backpack I brought and gently coax-shove Pixie inside and tie the cover closed. Pixie’s head barely sticks out, he eyes are inquisitive, her pink little tongue lolling.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and swing her onto my back.

  The tower is built with a web of crisscrossing supports, the same supports I was using like a ladder when it was upright. They’re a few feet apart and a few inches wide. The webbing gets tighter the closer we get to the far side of the street.

  The tower looks intact, like it mostly survived the fall, but it’s as swaybacked as a motherfucking hotdog now.

  The fall cleared the snow.

  I can only hope there’s no ice.

  “Let’s get the kids to the where the framing gets close together, see? And then we can leave them and come back. I don’t want anyone to be too far away,” I say.

  I get to the edge of the roof and then push against the framing with one foot, testing the tower from eminent collapse.

  I wink at Samantha.

  She just frowns.

  Love is a tricky thing.

  The framing at the bottom is way too far apart for the kids to walk across on their own, but it’s stable — for now.

  The Button Eyes have seen us and are back to their ritual of reaching out to us, like we’re tossing out beads at Mardi Gras.

  “Lane?” Samantha calls.

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will, and Keats, make sure no one dies.”

  “I got your six,” he says.

  “My what?”

  “I always wanted to say that, I got your back, you know?” He nearly grins.

  I hope he’s for real.

  “Have your .22 and .38?” I ask Jem.

  “Yeah, I got this,” she says softly, “I got this.” She touches my cheek below my black marble of an eye, and then wraps her arms around my neck and whispers so quietly I can barely hear. “We got this.”

  She’s still fucked up from earlier, from whatever she went through, but we don’t have time to figure it out. I pick her up as she keeps her hold around my neck and wraps her legs around my waist.

  I step out onto the steel, taking each step slowly, tentatively.

  I don’t think there’s enough Button Eyes to knock the tower over, but they’re rocking the shit out of it, it feels like being on a boat on a choppy lake.

  I try to ignore the movement.

  A line of X’s leads to the upper section of the tower, and each X is divided with more framing. I test each cross-member as I go, but they feel solid.

  Jem is quiet, her face buried into my neck, like she’s afraid and doesn’t want to watch, but that doesn’t sound like her — the truth is I have no idea what she’s thinking.

  “How’re you doing?” I ask.

  She doesn’t move. I hear her voice vibrate against the skin of my neck. “Good.”

  “That it?”

  “Yep.”

  I laugh and her arms tighten.

  I walk as quickly as I can, but the whole thing is unnerving as fuck, still it doesn’t take too long to get across.

  I let Jem slip out of my arms when we get to the tighter webbing where the framing is kid friendly. Sheet metal wraps parts of the upper tower, and a large satellite dish is bolted to it here, it’s a good place to stop.

  I slip Pixie off my shoulder and set the bag down. “Stay, please?”

  Jem takes the straps of the bag and holds them as she sits down next to the dish, legs crossed. “I’ll watch her.”

  “Lane?” she asks.

  I kneel down.

  She pulls my sunglasses off and inspects my dark eye.

  “Pixie says not to worry.”

  “Pixie says?”

  She nods, as earnest as can be.

  “Well, if Pixie says so.”

  Pixie peeks out of the backpack, and then ducks her head back inside, big old sad eyes hiding deep inside the bag. I wish I could hide like that, let someone else worry about everything.

  What are you, Pixie?

  Jem slides my Ray Bans back into place and smiles a little smile.

  I touch her cheek for just a moment, wishing I had something to give her, to say, to make it better.

  “It’s okay,” she says.

  I smile and ruffle her hair, and then I stand and face my waving fans again. They fill the street, all of this block and the next and the next, all the way to the smoldering remains of Freemont in the distance.

  “Stay there, and get your .38 ready,” I say, and head back down the tower.

  It’s wiggling more now.

  “This is going to take forever if you carry all of
us over, one by one. Is it sturdy enough to take more weight?” Samantha asks.

  “Maybe?” I shrug. “Yeah, you’re probably right, fast is better than slow.”

  I scoop up Casey and she giggles. “Ready?” I ask.

  “Ready!” she shouts.

  “Help Shinji and his friends. You guys don’t need to be carried, do you? I’ll get the little squirts,” I say.

  “I’m not a little squirt,” Emily grumbles.

  “Are too!” And then I’m stepping out on the tower.

  “I’m a little squirt!” Casey shouts. “I’m a little squirt!”

  I feel the structure shudder slightly as Samantha steps on behind me, and again when Shinji joins her. It’s noticeably bouncier this trip. The Button Eyes are having a bigger effect, the tower is twisting more, shaking.

  But I refuse to slow down until I drop Casey next to Jem.

  “I’ll watch Casey too,” Jem says, as Casey slides out of my arms.

  The girls have practically become soul mates in a matter of days, The Pixie Girls; they’re going to be dangerous when they get older. God have mercy on the boys that cross them.

  Samantha stops behind me and I take Shinji’s hand, helping him over the last steps. “Go on up,” I say. “But don’t go inside yet. Stay on the tower.”

  He says something under his breath, but I let it go, and follow Samantha back, watching her step from support to support; I can’t take my eyes off the striped socks sticking out of her boots, and how they’re pulled up over her jeans almost to her knees, and remembering when my arms were around those knees and those boots were against my cheek.

  Not a very productive thought under the circumstances.

  Sam stops and looks back. “What?”

  I feel my cheeks getting warm. “Just thinking about cold desks and dark rooms — cold asses.”

  She grins as she blushes, and quickly looks away.

  I stop next to the roof, balancing with one foot on the tower and the other buried to the ankle in snow on the roof. “Em, I’m taking Holly next, okay?”

  “I’m good,” Emily says.

  Samantha is still red when I turn back.

  I see Keats grin out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t know the what of it, but he’s old enough to understand the why of it. I think I like him.

  “Let’s go, you’re a squirt too,” I say as Holly reaches out with her remaining hand. I look into her blue eyes. She’s tough. I wonder what her face is going to look like under those bandages. She smiles. “Careful, watch your step.”

  “Nice shades, G,” she says.

  Our fingers are intertwined as she balances against me with each step, slow and methodical. She’s got her stump sticking out for balance, though, learning how to do it all over again.

  And then the tower screeches as it shifts to the right, like a cardboard moving box collapsing, and then it stops with a shudder.

  I reach out and grab Holly around the waist, and brace myself.

  I hear someone scream.

  Carlton is hanging from one of the cross beams behind us, screaming his ass off. Samantha’s got a hold of his arms, but she doesn’t have very good leverage, besides his feet are already too low…he’s in reach of the Button Eyes.

  He probably weighs as much as she does.

  Keats heads for the tower, but I throw my hand up and shout, “Keats, stop!”

  His added weight might bring the whole damn thing down.

  He balances on the edge of the roof.

  Emily and Larry are close behind him, watching.

  It’s already over, we have no way of getting him up, and even less time to do it. But he doesn’t have to suffer. He doesn’t have to be eaten alive right before our eyes either. “Forgive me, Carlton, you weren’t a bad kid,” I whisper.

  Holly gives me a funny look as I sit her down on one of the corners where the cross-members come together. “Hang on.” And then I take hold of the same cross-member she’s sitting on, wrap my legs and one arm around it, and then swing under, hanging upside down just above the outstretched hands of my hungry audience, hoping I still have time.

  I can smell the bile and rot.

  “Lane, what are you doing?” Samantha screams.

  I draw my .45.

  Carlton’s less than ten feet away, but it’s already too late.

  He sees me. Our eyes meet and he gets it. He’s screaming frantically to pull him up, to save him…don’t shoot him, please…and then he’s screaming as the first of the Button Eyes begin tearing into his legs.

  But he doesn’t let go of the framing, he’s still hoping, grasping, fighting, but he’s slowly slipping away from Samantha’s grip.

  I line up the sights.

  I see Lisa, I see Allen’s brother…I see that bitch out on the soccer field.

  Carlton deserves better than her.

  I wish we could have gotten to him, I wish…

  Fuck it.

  “Let go, Sam.”

  She does.

  I shoot him in the head.

  The shot echoes down the street as he drops into the mob and disappears.

  No screams.

  No drama.

  No anything.

  Just another murder for the Ghost.

  I hear Shinji screaming, but I can’t make out any of it; I just know he hates me even more now, and I guess I’m okay with that.

  I twist myself around and climb back up, and sit, my feet dangling just out of reach of the creatures below.

  I look down the tower to Samantha; she’s bracing herself on one of the framing corners.

  She looks dazed.

  She’s covered in Carlton blood.

  She wipes her face, and the confusion turns to pissed, but she’s sad too. “I could…”

  I shake my head. “…have been pulled down with him? It was too late from the beginning. He was fucked, it’s just that simple — wasn’t anything to be done.”

  She’s still holding it together, but I wonder how well. “Just that simple?” She looks dismayed, horrified even. “Nothing is that simple, Lane, nothing.”

  I stuff my .45 into my pocket and adjust my Ray Bans.

  “Is it?” she asks. There’s dismay in her voice.

  “Yeah, sometimes…”

  Samantha turns back to the roof. “Ready, Larry?”

  Fuck no, he’s not ready, who would be? Samantha isn’t either, but we keep moving because we have to…we keep at it…keep not dying…because it’s what we have to do to get to the promises we’ve told each other — it’s our penance to make the lies real.

  “How about you, Holly?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “How can you do it?” She’s not accusatory, it’s more like, where do you find the guts to do what needs doing?

  I help her up, and hold her close. “Because there isn’t anyone else.”

  When I get her to the halfway point, Jem and Casey are on their feet. They look worried, not for Carlton, but for me. I love them so much, it scares the shit out of me.

  “Stay,” I say, and help Larry the rest of the way. He walks up to Shinji on the far side of the girls.

  Shinji is fucking pissed. I don’t know what to do with him, cut him loose first chance I get I guess.

  He’s a fucking liability now.

  Or is he just that simple too?

  It would be easy, he’s closer than Carlton was.

  He’s…

  “Lane?”

  It’s Sam.

  “Yeah?”

  “What now?”

  This end of the tower is buried into the lower level of the Tweed and Feed. The second floor went with it, along with the third floor, some of the roof and all of the snow. The building is a total wreck, but we need to get up to the surrounding roofs. Sooner or later we’re going to have to climb through the destruction.

  “Samantha, stay here, take them to the end, but stay on the tower unless it gets unstable.”

  “What about you?”

  “
I’m going to get Em, and Keats…”

  “He needs to go last. He’s heavy.”

  “Samantha, that’s not very politically correct,” I joke.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Lane, I’m not going to let you and Emily die because some fat-ass thought…”

  “It’s okay, Sam, it’s okay, relax.”

  “Don’t tell me to relax, Carlton…Carlton just…just fucking…you shot him, right out of my arms...I watched him…Christ, Lane, I’m wearing him. Don’t tell me to fucking relax.”

  “Stay here,” I say firmly.

  Trying to deal with everything at once is too much, I can barely deal with just this one thing at once.

  I turn back to our bridge. It’s a wobbly walk, the tower shaking and rocking with every step, but I slowly make my way to the roof. I do my best not to look where Carlton fell.

  This part of the structure isn’t nearly as stable as it was when I first tested it. We need to hurry. The Button Eyes are rocking the tower now, a fuck of a lot. It’s just a matter of time, whatever’s left of my great plan is about to collapse, and pretty fucking soon at that.

  I just shake my head as I pass Keats. He looks scared.

  I walk over to the ammunition bags.

  “Lane!” It’s Sam.

  Keats is already out on the tower, his arms stretched out like a high-wire acrobat.

  “Keats, stop, let Emily go first!”

  “It’s going to fall, I need to get over…I need to get…”

  He didn’t even take his backpack. The tower is shuddering with every step, and Keats is getting more and more off balance as he goes, each step wilder, each desperate pause taking longer and longer.

  “Stop, Keats, slow down, get your balance. Keats!” I scream, but he’s lost to panic.

  I thought he was made of tougher stuff. I guess it’s easier to be brave when everything looks hopeless, but when you can sense rescue coming, taste it…feel that second chance…look it in the eye, shit changes.

  The swayback of the tower buckles, protesting metal screaming like a baby…and Keats is fucked. He bends at the waist, butt in the air, arms spinning like he’s trying to take off and fly. He shuffles his feet, tries to get to stable supports, but then the whole thing shifts again, supports crumpling in on themselves. And then one side of the tower breaks free, rivets popping, framing twisting violently in every direction as the structure rolls and falls into the mob.