Consumption

by Heather Herrman

  Mabel was alive, and she’d been following them.

  Star had to find her. But if Javier didn’t follow her, then…she couldn’t finish the thought. She needed him after. For her own insurance, Star needed him.

  If there was an after.

  Star heard an insect buzz close to her ear and pass, while below her, grasses whipped at her legs. The sky was a pale purple, the sun setting with a brilliance that belied the ugliness beneath it. In the distance the outline of Cavus stood like a forgotten toy left out in the yard, while behind Star, the factory glowed a bright, white light from its windows, all the electricity in the building turned to high. The scene was as it should be—an apocalyptic setting of man’s hand-built sin pressed against the yielding but unfathomably beautiful breast of the earth.

  Star hardly saw any of it. She thought only of Mabel. If Javier followed, they could kill Mabel together and make it out of this thing alive. If he followed, then it would be only Pill who had to go into the Feeders’ nest and die. Not Javier. Javier could live.

  If he only followed her.

  She did not dare look back.

  There, just ahead, was the hill. She was almost upon it. Star steeled herself. If Mabel had become one of those things, Star would kill her. With her bare hands if she had to. She wouldn’t let Mabel live like that, even if Javier didn’t follow.

  Star rounded the hill and there, just as she’d expected, was the outline of a person, its face turned in Star’s direction.

  But it was not the person she’d expected.

  On the other side of the hill, waiting for her, stood her father.

  Chapter 25

  1

  “Should we go after them?”

  “No,” John said. “You should stay right here.” He took her hand, and Erma let him; she did not try to pull away and chase Star.

  They watched in silence as Javier ran after Star, and Pill’s truck rolled farther and farther away from them.

  They stood alone, Cavus behind them and the factory in front of them. In between and all around these was land. Beautiful, empty land. There would never be any chance of being hemmed in here. There was a safety to it. A feeling, even now, that if something came, Erma would know where it was coming from. In that moment, with John’s hand firmly in her own, she felt peace.

  “What should we do?” Erma asked. “Pill can’t make it alone.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He squeezed her hand. Erma started to squeeze back, but something in his tone stopped her. A feeling of cold awakened in her belly. Cold as deep and as dark as the bottom of a winter river. The brief moment of peace, if it had ever been there at all, was gone.

  “John?” She had a hard time finding her voice.

  He didn’t answer her.

  “John? You okay, baby?”

  John laughed, but it was a joyless sound. “Are you?”

  “No. I—I guess not.” She felt her palms grow sweaty. “What do you want to do?”

  “Shh,” he said. Erma followed his eyes toward the factory. There was something he wasn’t telling her. She knew it with a sudden clarity that frightened her.

  But just as quickly as this revelation came, she knew that she didn’t want to know. Whatever he was hiding from her, she wanted it kept hidden. It was nothing good, could be nothing good nor anything she ever, ever wanted to know.

  Erma dropped John’s hand and squatted to the ground, whistling for Maxie.

  “Come here, girl.” Maxie came, and Erma stroked her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. You’re such a good girl.”

  “Erma.” Above her, John spoke, and she knew if she lifted her head, if she even lifted her hand, his confession, whatever it might be, would begin.

  She stroked Maxie’s head more quickly.

  “Erma.”

  Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. She pulled Maxie to her and whispered in her ear. “Shh. It’s okay, girl. I promise. Everything’s going to be okay.” If she only kept petting Maxie, kept stroking the dog’s soft fur and did not stop did not stop did not stop. Maxie. Dear Maxie, who had come to them as a puppy when Erma had most needed her. She’d been afraid of dogs before that but then, one day, there Maxie had been, a wormy puppy who’d crawled beneath their rental house and gotten herself stuck. Erma’d had to spend four hours sitting crossed-legged and silent with a bowl of lunch meat in front of the crawl space before the dog would finally venture out. When she had, Maxie’d been so weak she could hardly stand. Erma had saved Maxie that day. Maybe Maxie could save her now. Erma ran her hand along the dog’s soft back.

  “Erma. Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” She felt John’s hand on her shoulder. “Stand up. Please.”

  With every nerve and muscle in her body protesting, Erma slowly rose. “Please,” she said, not knowing what she was begging for. “Please don’t.” She laid a single finger against her husband’s lips. “Whatever you’re going to say, just don’t.”

  Gently, John took her hand away, holding it and moving it to rest against his chest. She’d cried on that chest, laughed on it. She’d claimed it as her own, but always she’d been able to remove herself. Now she feared to drop her hand, feared that to stop touching him would be the same as a country pulling up its flag.

  “I don’t have time to make this longer than it should be, so please just listen to me and believe me.” John looked tired. His dark hair, a pride of his that he kept constantly neat and short, was disheveled, and stubble stood out on his cheeks. But it was his eyes, the deep gray of them that seemed, now, to have no bottom that caught her. Spoke to her of a secret that she never wanted to know. She could not let him go on.

  “Stop it,” Erma said, shaking her head back and forth. “Just stop.”

  “I’m infected, Erma.”

  There it was. The secret unveiled, given up from its hiding place and, like all good secrets, unable to be returned.

  “No!” She jerked her hand away. “No. That’s not true. You…you’ve been with me. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “I don’t have time, Erma. There’s only one way out of this. For all of us. One last chance, and that chance is being given to us because I’m infected. It’s the only way.”

  “No,” Erma said, making her voice firm. “No, John. That’s not true. I see what you’re doing, you know. You’re trying to be some kind of a martyr.” She laughed, shakily. “It won’t work. That’s my role, anyway.”

  John did not look away, and he did not say a word as he cupped his wife’s chin in his hand and turned her face to his. He kissed her then, not on the lips but just beside them, and there was so much in that kiss, so much sadness and love and unbearable truth, she could not take it. She pulled away.

  “Please, John. If you love me, stay. Just stay.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Look. Pill will take care of it!” she tried, in a last attempt, pointing over his shoulder. “See!”

  The truck did not stop at the open factory doors but drove directly through them. “There,” she said. “He’s got in.”

  “It’s too much for him. He won’t be able to do it. You know that.”

  “He will,” she said. “Just watch.”

  “Erma—”

  “Watch, dammit!”

  John opened his mouth and then, seeing his wife’s face, closed it. He took her hand and for thirty seconds they stood there, together, their fingers interlaced, and said not a word, only watched the outline of the factory, the light streaming from its open doors and mixing with the light of the prairie. They waited seconds longer, and the sky remained still.

  “I have to go, sweetie,” John said, turning toward her. She looked ready to protest but then stopped when she saw what was in his eyes. “I have to go and there can’t be any discussion. I’ve done a lot of shit things in this relationship. A lot of them. I won’t tell you them all now because you don’t need to know any more of them than you already do—”

  “We both have!” Erma sa
id, and now she clutched him, her hands tugging at his shirt. “It was never just you. It was me, too, John.”

  “Yes, it was both of us. But it was more me. I almost lost you, Erma. I almost willingly let you go. Until we got here. Until Cavus, and I got you back.”

  “You did.” She nestled her head against his chest. “We got each other back.”

  “That’s right.” John nodded. She felt the scratch of his chin whiskers against her forehead. “We got each other back, which is why I can forgive myself for the other stuff. Just barely, but I can. This, though. If I’m right, if I really am already contaminated, and I don’t do something about it…If I put you in danger? Nothing will ever make up for that, Erma. Nothing.”

  “No.” She clung to him, grabbing at his shirt and digging her fingers into his chest enough to hurt. “You’re not leaving me, you bastard! You hear me? You’re not!”

  “Erma, honey.” Gently, he untangled her fingers, and she saw tears forming in his eyes, and they scared her more than any of his gentle words. He’d only ever cried once before in her presence. Once, and it had been when they lost the baby.

  “NO!” she screamed. “Don’t you sit here and try to make nice with me and…and…just leave me.” The words came in great choking gulps as she struggled to draw breath. “Don’t you dare, John!”

  “I don’t have a choice,” he told her.

  “You do. You do! If you leave me, you’re a coward. Do you hear me? A coward, John Scott! If you leave me, then I’m no wife of yours. Everything we ever had means nothing. If you leave me, then I’ll hate you. I HATE YOU.”

  “Goodbye, Erma. Look after Star and Javier, if they make it. It’s like you said about us being a family. They’re yours now. Ours. Think of them that way.”

  “NO!”

  But he was already gone, walking away from her, and then running. Maxie tried to follow, but Erma yanked the dog back, holding her tightly. She sank to her knees, pulled Maxie closer, and watched her husband cross the field toward the bowels of the factory, where Pill had already gone. Pill, who had looked brave and old in the front of his pickup truck, the explosives hidden beneath his seat. Pill, who had somehow or another failed, because the building still stood.

  Erma watched as John crossed the tall grasses, watched as from ten feet away she could still make out the wrinkles in his shirt, the shirt she’d bought for him two Christmases ago because she’d liked how its color lit his face. At twenty feet, she could still see the glow of the white skin on his fingers when they trailed against his pants, swinging through the heavy air as he walked—the fingers that had held her hand for the first time on that autumn night at the bar, the fingers that had threaded and then unthreaded her heart as he worked them on every inch of her, pried her open and dug out that part of her she’d thought she’d never show to anyone; and then he was at thirty feet, and she could only see his outline, the shoulders of his that never bent but sloped naturally, sloped just slightly as if he carried the weight of the world upon him; and then he was at fifty and for an instant, brilliantly, he was lit up against the light from the factory’s doorway, nothing more than a shadow of a man, and he did not turn around but she could see his face just the same, and she knew that she would never love again as she did in that moment, and she knew, too, that to love that much and that completely, if only for a second, was worth everything that would follow. She watched as his now unbearably tiny outline stepped away from her and all the way into the factory’s light, watched until he stepped through the door and the building swallowed him whole.

  2

  When Pill drove the truck through the open doors, he knew two things at once: it wasn’t going to fit, and things would go very badly for him.

  He was wrong about the first. The truck fit rather neatly between the two doors, slipping inside the factory like a greased pig into a chute. Around him, the overhead lights shone blindly upon machinery, a line belt and mixing vat near the far wall. At first he thought he was alone, thought he’d made a mistake. But then Pill looked up at the grated metal walkway that surrounded the room.

  They were waiting.

  Pill allowed himself a second to take in all he could about the factory. He’d never been inside before, and he didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. From the outside, the building looked impressive. Smooth white plastic and shining tin came together to form perfect geometric walls. There were very few windows in the factory, but the ones it did have formed a jeweled line beginning fifteen feet up from the ground and circling the building like a belt. All of this was topped with the two twenty-foot-tall chimneys, great smokestacks that lent the factory a certain majesty.

  Inside was another story. Driving through the doors felt something like walking into the gates of the Emerald City only to find a janitor’s closet. The floor was nothing but rough concrete, the low-budget kind like one might find on temporary street dividers. There were no separations in the room, only station after station of conveyer belts and clutter. An entire twenty feet was taken up with storage barrels shoved against one another. To their left was a toppled stack of boxes. Above everything, just below the windows, was the walkway. It seemed to be the only thing that had any actual substance, from all appearances made of metal and looking like the parts might have been taken from old and sturdy fire escapes. But these walkways were not meant for escape. As far as Pill could tell, there was only one way out—the door he’d just driven through.

  Pill gunned the engine, pulling the pack out from behind his seat and fumbling with the lighter in his bag. He wasn’t even going to pretend to try to get out again. That had been the plan as he’d told it to the others, when they’d thought they were coming. One of them would unstring the cord from the dynamite, and run with it. The person could then light the end from outside the building. But that would be foolhardy, as would an external detonator, even if he’d had such a luxury. No, he’d have to do it the old-fashioned way, and set it all to blazes. No tricks for him. Pill shoved down the lock on his door.

  That was when the Feeders began to drop from above. They were Feeders, but they were also people from Cavus, people Pill had known all his life. One by one, they sprung themselves from the walkway above. There was a thump on the hood of his truck as someone landed on it.

  There, in front of him, was Alex Sandwing, the man Pill sometimes had coffee with in town. Alex wore no clothes, and a bright red stripe of fur ran down the length of his back, contrasting with the wispy gray hair on his head. When Pill had last seen him, it had been in a hospital bed up in Billings, where Alex was stuck with yet another bout of pneumonia and from which he came away in a wheelchair. He and Pill had liked to joke about which one of them was the oldest, and which the ugliest.

  It must be nice to be able to move like that at eighty. The thought, completely inappropriate, snuck up on him. Nice to go from a walker and forced oxygen tanks to springing down from the side of a building, nimbler than a mountain goat. Pill could see why a person—hell, a town—would want something like this.

  But at what cost?

  Pill shook his head to clear it. His mind was stalling him, he knew. Pushing worthless questions in front of the task at hand. He knew at what cost. They all did.

  Pill had the dynamite ready to go. He’d tested a stick of it down the old well at his house and watched the whole thing collapse. It worked, and worked well. The dynamite was old, and unlike the newer stuff, didn’t need an electric current to set it off, only a flame. With trembling hands he pulled the matches out of his pocket.

  Come on. Come on, Pill, just one. Just light one and this whole place goes.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Mary Swenson, who’d been one of Jessi’s dear friends. She was perfectly dressed and her hair, usually done up in a bun, flew loose and free about her face. She was actually very pretty. Her eyes lit up, a bright silver. She was watching him. Staring at him…

  Pill looked down to see that he’d laid his matches beside him. Dear
God! What had he been doing? He couldn’t look at them, couldn’t think about them or…He picked the matches up again, flipping over the cover. He had to hurry, had to hurry, had to hurry.

  The driver’s-side truck door flew open, pulled completely off its hinges, and a man, seven feet tall at the very least and wearing the remnants of a yellow rain slicker, pulled him out.

  The matches fell uselessly to Pill’s feet.

  “No!” Pill said, and found that he was weeping. “Oh, God, no!”

  The man in the slicker pulled him forward and planted a kiss right on his forehead. But it wasn’t a man at all, of course. The creature inside the man had grown so large that the flesh of the skin it wore split in several places, revealing a gray skin beneath it that looked the texture of a moth’s wings.

  Pill shut his eyes tightly and shook his head. He felt the creature’s breath, hot and heavy, upon his neck.

  “I’ve waited so long,” said the creature. “Too long. But it’s my time now.”

  I’m sorry, Jessi. I’ve failed.

  Pill.

  “Pill.”

  Pill opened his eyes, realizing that the voice was not coming from his mind but from the doorway. He turned his head to find who’d spoken.

  3

  Javier didn’t see what tripped him. The ground came to meet him with a rush, and the side of his face hit it hard. Spit, expelled from his mouth by the impact, shot forward and landed on the offending foot. It was white, with delicately painted pink toes.