“How are we supposed to get out of this one?” she asked. “They’ll kill us tomorrow.”
“That’s a long way away.” I sat up.
“We’re too young, Pablo. For this. For any of this.” She gestured helplessly into the night.
I took her hands in mine. “You know I love you, right?”
She shook her head. So I kissed her again, just to make a point.
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
* * *
I woke up, surprisingly enough, to the sound and smell of rain.
For the longest time I lay as still as I could while I listened to Rachel Ann’s soft breathing. I had probably slept an hour, maybe two, but the confused fog that had hovered over me the past couple of days was gone. My mind was achingly clear. It was probably the clearest it had ever been my entire life.
The morning light was still a light, fuzzy grey, but it allowed me to trace the outline of her face with my eyes. It was something Mark wouldn’t have done. I had to think that, had to believe it or I’d go mad. Last night’s memory and a few exchanged words couldn’t change the truth. She was carrying Mark’s baby, and I had no idea, still, who I was in her life.
I knew what she was, in mine. Ever and always, I had come to expect her in it—whether it was significant as an afternoon spent studying in a storm, or as simple as a glance across the hall. I hadn’t really known it was love, then. It had been too timid, too lacking in passion or real desire. But then, what did you expect? I was young. People say it all the time. There’s no way in hell you can love when you’re not even old enough to legally buy booze. You’re a goddamned child. What do you know of love, of the layers and complexities that come with the word, of how it can ignite fire and start a war and kill people? Let’s just sweep your emotions to a corner—call it puppy love, just to amuse you—because children, even if they walk for hours trying to find a missing kitten or mourn dead parents for years, are incapable of feeling anything beyond skin-deep.
Okay, yeah. There’s different levels of clear. I’d drink water Rachel Ann wouldn’t wash her face with. The point is, the enormity of what I was feeling frightened me. I was suddenly aware of the lengths I was willing to travel for her, for this—the amount of burden I was willing to bear. It’s like, I’d always loved her—I’d always been unable to imagine my life without her—but overnight it all changed to something brazenly suicidal.
First things, first. I wasn’t just going to accept that we were locked up and about to die. Somehow, I became convinced that I would have the ability to fight for our freedom, or at least her and her baby. I didn’t know how. I didn’t have to know how. I just knew I was ready to do it.
Secondly, when we returned to the city, I was going to beat up Mark. The guy was taller and had more friends than me, but hey, if I could imagine I was strong enough to throw around a whole villageful of bloodthirsty creatures, a few measly boys were a piece of cake. I’d get him to admit he never loved Rachel Ann and had no intention of ever returning to her or her child. Then I’d step up, claim it was mine, bear the judgement and somehow survive Rachel Ann’s dad’s gun in order to find a job and raise a family.
Yes, clear. I didn’t say rational or sane. As soon as that train of thought ended I curled up my fists and started laughing, and that woke Rachel Ann. She rubbed her eyes and murmured, “Great. You’ve gone loony on me. Just what I needed.”
“I just found it funny how sex can inflate a man’s ego so much he suddenly starts thinking he’s invincible.” I caught the look on her face and grinned. “Sex with you, I mean.”
“Right. Well at least you’re not fluttering around claiming it’s love.”
I grew sombre. “It’s one and the same to me.” Daylight was starting to seep through the cracks in the wall, so I took the time to claim my pants from the corner of the room. It gave me an excuse not to have to admit things I might later regret. She was carrying Mark’s baby—all I had was my pride.
I heard her sigh. “Why,” she asked, “are mornings so different?”
I didn’t want to answer that. I didn’t want to get her to admit she was just scared and didn’t really love me at all. I didn’t think I could bear that.
The door creaked open. I was nearer to it than Rachel Ann, so I stayed exactly where I was, my shoulders hunched forward. Then I saw Enrique’s face and relaxed, but only for a moment.
“Umm,” Enrique said, glancing at both of us. He didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, though. He placed a pitcher of water and a large bag of bread on the floor. “Ciskong said to give you this. He’s ah, waiting for me just outside.”
“Why would he care?” I snapped. “They’re going to eat us. You’re probably happy about that too.”
“I’m not,” he said, his cheeks colouring. “I... ate last night. A funeral down the road in the valley. I’m still trying, okay? Don’t kill yourselves or anything.” He paused. “There’s people watching the hut so you don’t escape. Don’t do anything rash. Wait for me.”
“Riko!” Ciskong barked from the distance. Enrique bowed and shut the door again, padlocking it from behind.
I peered through the cracks and saw Rafael and another of Berto’s friends standing maybe twelve feet from the hut. I grimaced, but I took the bread and water and gave it to Rachel Ann first. She started eating furiously. I remembered, once again, that she was pregnant. I hadn’t fully come to grips with that yet.
I folded my legs beside her. “They’re probably fattening us up,” I joked.
She glared at me.
“All right, all right. If that’s the case they’re not doing a very good job of it anyway.” I took the pitcher. The water felt heavenly against my parched throat.
“Pablo.”
“At least good old Riko doesn’t look like he’s at death’s door anymore,” I said nonchalantly, grabbing the rest of the bread from her hands and stuffing as much of it as I could in my mouth. “I hope he didn’t touch these with his bare hands.”
“About Mark...”
“Maybe I could break through this floor and throw sand into Ciskong’s eyes.”
She reached for my elbow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to make you hope. I’ve got to straighten my affairs out, first.”
I smiled politely and tucked her hand back to her lap. “In case you’ve forgotten, you probably won’t have to worry about that at all.”
Her face tightened. “You’re right.” But I could tell she really didn’t quite believe me. People tend to be self-centered like that. Haven’t we all seen enough movies where people argue, split up, and get hacked into little bits by the bolo-wielding maniac? I had thought it would be different in real life, but I guess they had to have picked up the idea from somewhere, and Rachel Ann and I weren’t beyond that after all.
They came for us in the afternoon.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have put too much faith in Enrique. Perhaps if I had tried to escape, Rafael and the other guy wouldn’t have even noticed, and Rachel Ann and I would be miles away by now. I wouldn’t know. See, I chose to sit and stay beside her those last few hours because I was afraid I would never get the chance to again.
It wasn’t, now that I look back on it, probably one of my smartest decisions. Choosing to come here for Christmas vacation was another.
Anyway, they dragged us out of the hut. I barrelled towards the first guy and got a clout on the head for my efforts. So much for my heroic plan. I didn’t even have time to spin around and see how Rachel Ann was doing. They wrapped my wrists in plastic rope and made me walk to the center of the clearing.
Someone, I saw, had made a fire.
The old woman was lying on a litter right beside it. I had to look twice to make sure it was her—she looked like a corpse there. She lifted her head when she saw me. “Pablo,” she said, smiling, and somebody stepped on my back, forcing me to kneel.
Shit, I thought, my mind racing. I couldn’t even muster my usual sarcastic remarks. I tried
to jump to the side but Ciskong stepped forward and grabbed my shoulder to keep me in place. Shit. These bastards were going to kill me. They were saving me up for the old woman’s sustenance. It was blindingly obvious—she looked so weak, and of course she wouldn’t be able to go out there and hunt, or scavenge, the way everyone else did.
I tried to glance at the sky. It was a light, almost rose-like, red. I remembered Becca had changed when it got dark. Did I have time? An hour, maybe two? Enrique promised he had a plan—perhaps he was waiting for the right time. Inwardly, I started cursing at how ridiculously trustworthy he seemed at times. Of course he didn’t have a plan. If they killed and ate me, they’d probably pass my tiny little bits around and he’d get a share. He’d win. Everybody would but me.
Well, yeah. It would’ve been slightly amusing if Rachel Ann wasn’t a few feet behind me. I tried not to think about how it was going to be the same for her. Maybe more. She was pregnant, after all, and I heard these freaks liked unborn babies. They turned them into monsters and the little monsters crawled out of the bushes as their own separate form of abomination and I—
FUCK, Pablo. What’s wrong with you? Think. You’re still alive. It’s not too late while you’re still alive. I saw Berto step out of the growing circle around me and hand Ciskong a bolo. It was probably sharpened. I hoped it was. Suddenly, I couldn’t help but think of my father. Would he ever find out? Would he care? What would he feel about the fact that this was all his fault?
The bolo flashed in the air. I heard it thump behind me, and for a long, agonizing moment, I was sure that Rachel Ann was dead.
“On this day they say the Christ was born...” I heard Ciskong grunt while he carried a headless chicken and started pouring its blood into a bowl. I dared craning my neck to the side and saw Rachel Ann standing there, transfixed. I couldn’t pull my eyes away. I started thinking that if I was going to die, it wouldn’t be so bad if she was the last thing I ever saw.
“Take him forward!” Ciskong uttered. They pulled me to my feet.
“Pablo Santos.” The old woman’s voice sounded like creaky hinges. She rolled to her side, unable to sit up from her litter. “You were born under the shadow of a banyan tree, the night of a full moon.”
“What a crock of shit,” I broke in. “I was born in a hospital.”
“There was a banyan outside the hospital grounds,” Ciskong grunted, waving the bolo at me. “Now let Grandmother finish, or I’ll cut your ear off!”
She continued, ignoring our conversation. “My familiar marked you the moment you slid out of your mother’s womb, seemingly lifeless and still wrapped in your caul. My familiar could have killed you easily, knowing you are fated to end her own life, but she heard your mother name you Pablo and decided it would be worth the sacrifice.”
I took one hesitant step forward. “I don’t understand.”
She turned her clouded eyes to me. “Saint Paul spread Christianity with a fervour that ended in his death. He succeeded, if that revelry and chaos down in the city right now was anything to go by. To have his name on a child born under all the signs, such as yours—well.” She started laughing. Or wheezing. I couldn’t tell.
“Signs?” It was Rachel Ann, this time.
The old woman smiled when she spoke. “Ah,” she said, like someone who’d just stepped into a bakery after dawn. “The signs, girl. Of he who will act as a pillar to our dying race. Of he who will bring our people to a new tomorrow, where we do not have to hide like rats in order to survive. Of my heir.”
She’s confused, I thought, her words running through me like diarrhea. I’m not a Paul. I’m not even a Paulo. I’m Pablo. “What the hell makes you think I’m your heir?” I cried out. “That I even want to be your heir?”
“You were born,” the old woman replied, simply. “You never had a choice. You see? You even came here without thinking about it. When Ciskong told me how this village drew you all the way down here, so close to their saviour’s day of birth, I could not keep my excitement. When you killed my familiar two nights ago, cutting off her tongue and leaving her for dead, I knew it was time. Bring him closer, Ciskong. Let him receive my gift. I am ready.”
“I’m not!” I screamed. Ciskong grabbed me by the neck. I twisted, managed to grab his wrist with my teeth, and bit down, savagely. He laughed.
Two others came forward to hold my other arm and they dragged me to the old woman’s side. By now it was almost dark, and I could see their eyes glowing beyond the flames. I ground my teeth against each other, willing my whole body to turn into stone. Ciskong laughed again, wrapped my jaw around his paw, and smashed my head into the side of the litter, unhinging it.
The old woman’s eyes rolled back into her head as she started convulsing. Thick, white foam dripped from the corner of her mouth. Ciskong hooked his right thumb into my cheek while he swiftly reached into the old woman’s mouth with his left. A shiny pebble, black as night, seemed to jump into his palm.
I began to struggle again, my strength renewed, but he slammed my head against the bamboo a second time. I reeled back and he struck me and popped the slimy stone into my mouth.
They let me go. I dropped to my knees, gagging and heaving. Don’t swallow it, I thought, fighting the wave of nausea that wracked my whole body through, but I could feel the lump slide down my esophagus as if someone had shoved his fist down my throat. And then I was clutching my chest, suffocating, drowning, and as I caved into blackness I thought, dear God, my blood is beginning to boil...
“You’re a monster, Dad.”
They are words thrown carelessly, meant to hurt. My father stands there with his hands balled up in rage, but I know he won’t hit me. He is a coward and I have grown too old, too fast.
He moves one step. I stand my ground. “You’re useless,” he hisses, his voice a frothy bubble. “You’re lazy, good-for-nothing—I don’t care anymore. I’m leaving. I’m leaving, you hear me?”
He doesn’t leave. He waits. I do nothing. The silence is thick, unbearable. He breaks the balance by toppling the coffee table over and smashing the TV monitor. I don’t understand why he is angry. I know only that he wants me to placate him, but the very idea revolts me.
“Forgive him,” my mother says, an insignificant wisp in the background until it is all over—my father has finally stomped out and the living room is in pieces. “He can’t help himself. He’s got a lot of problems, dear, and...”
“Fuck him!” I scream, my voice hoarse. “I hate him. I hate him!” And I cry, because I don’t, because I don’t but he has given me no choice. He is wrong. You do not wake up each morning thinking up ways to make him angry. You don’t know any better. If you had your way he would be happy for always and always, he would have everything he ever wanted—money, power, your mother’s love, and a son who was perfect in every way.
But this is real life, and you can’t lay the burden of your happiness on another. I know that now, lying curled up on that ground, drenched in the pain he must have known, too, a long time ago when his father first took him up here to be turned. There was nothing I could have done. His grief had been set long before I ever came into his life.
The pain came in waves, interspersed between those long-forgotten memories of my father and an unmistakable urge to get up and run. It wasn’t that kind of bleeding, sharp pain that allowed you to pass dead out if it became too much to handle. It was more like a stomach ache and a fever combined—seemingly bearable, at turns, and then progressing up to a brief point where you’re quite sure you’re about to die before going through that whole cycle all over again.
My skin also crawled the whole time through, feeling for all the world like I’d been dropped in a tubful of ticks. I spun around, trying to claw my skin off while begging all the while for someone to throw a bucket of boiling water on me.
An orange light flashed to my side. I spun again, whimpering. The pain climaxed and I stumbled, clutching my belly, my tongue trying to work around a mouth that was swoll
en beyond recognition.
Kill me, please, I might have groaned, only I didn’t know, I didn’t know anymore. Everything was dark and spinning, and my hands and feet were bare and cold. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I wanted to die, but I didn’t know if I was already dead.
And then it came, a stronger pain that started in the pit of my stomach and spread like a web. My senses began to crawl on top of one another. Their voices turned to shadows turned to the stink of urine and dirt and death. I tasted blood, unaware that I had bitten my own tongue.
“Pablo.”
The voice brushed against my ear, impossibly familiar. It couldn’t be him, though. Even if he could sprout wings, he was all the way across the Pacific Ocean, and supposing he did, he wouldn’t care. Not like this. He would be cynical and condescending and he would tell me to stand up and bear it like a man. There would be no depth, no trace of compassion.
“Don’t fight it, Pablo. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
I groaned and lashed out, my mouth dribbling. The pain in my belly was turning into a hollow ball. I wanted food. I wanted soft, yielding, bloody flesh, I wanted it now, I wanted...
“Get the girl,” someone cried out among those shadows, and then that voice that was not my father’s came again, sharper this time, and not directed at me. “Get her away from here!”
“He needs this. You of all people know he does.”
“She’s his friend! He’ll never forgive you!”
“She is the best candidate for this. She is carrying a child—there’s no better way to nourish a first-turned. He’s inheriting Grandmother’s stone. If he’s not well-fed the power won’t properly awaken.”
I lifted my head and the scent that followed sent my mouth slavering. I bucked forward, throwing a burden out of the way. I leaped towards the writhing bundle laid out before me, my jaws snapping over my lolling tongue.
“Pablo!”
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