Fallout

by S D Wasley

  I hadn’t attended Mass in almost a year, maybe since last Christmas. We parked and entered the church, crossing ourselves on the doorstep. One of the upsides of choosing this church was that I didn’t recognise anyone. I checked the faces as they came in, keeping my head low. Some parishioners at our regular church didn’t like Dad and it was likely to be the same deal here. While we sat waiting for the service to begin Léon whispered questions to me.

  “What shall I do this afternoon to help?”

  “Just be there,” I muttered. “Don’t try to step in. Be guided by Cain and the others. They always know what to do.”

  “How will they intervene?”

  “They’ll wait until the critical moment and then move in. They know what they’re doing. Just watch.”

  He nodded but appeared dubious. “Pray with me,” he said all of a sudden, extending his hand.

  “What?”

  “To Saint Anthony. The patron saint of causes lost, of miracles.”

  My faith came as naturally to me as breathing and I couldn’t help but take his open hand and bow my head.

  “Blessed Saint Anthony, help us save these children. Give us strength, courage and resourcefulness. Let us be brave and tenacious.”

  His voice was low but earnest and my eyes prickled at the thought of the two boys in danger. I prayed silently, especially for the one in the hoodie. I was almost able to see him, a dark-eyed, smiling child in a maroon-coloured sweater, hood up in the rain. Somehow I was sure he was the one in danger. I concentrated all my thoughts on him and had a moment of disorientation in which the boy’s face seemed to float right in front of me but when I snapped my eyes open everything was as normal. I was still sitting in the pew with Léon praying beside me while he clutched my hand in a semi-painful grip. I loosed my hand from his and watched as he picked up the little crucifix around his neck and held it to his lips, still praying hard. At last he opened his eyes and met my gaze, giving me a quick smile. Stop, I commanded myself as my pulse hiked and skin warmed. It’s just the splendour of his gift. Nothing else.

  “Saint Anthony, pray for us,” he finished and I echoed his final plea. “We must do everything we can to save them,” he whispered as the Father took his place at the pulpit.

  “They always do,” I whispered back. “Please stop worrying. You’ll see. They won’t fail him.”

  Léon turned his eyes on mine for an instant and I saw something I didn’t expect. A deep pain. There was a wound in him and it was open, still bleeding. “Have you ever seen them fail?” he asked, his voice low.

  “No. Of course not. Never.”

  “Good,” he said, his voice fervent.

  We sat through a quiet, under-attended Mass. We took communion, responded to Father, and sang the hymns. I was confounded by how naturally it still came. No matter what I believed now or as I grew older, nothing would drive these habits out of my head. The rituals and reverence weren’t going anywhere.

  Afterwards, I dropped Léon back at the corner of Owen’s street and went home. I’d missed Antonia’s cooked breakfast and had to settle for toast in the Old House kitchen while Albion pumped me for information.

  “If you’re going to two-time your boyfriend you could at least choose a sexier venue than a church. I know this place out the back of the old racetrack that―”

  “Albion.” I cut him off sharply, “don’t be ridiculous. I’m not two-timing anyone. Since when is taking someone to Mass some kind of date?”

  “Well, I don’t know what you churchies do for fun,” he retorted.

  “I’m not a churchie and I certainly wouldn’t call Mass fun.”

  He teased me all afternoon until I could finally leave for Liz’s place. Half of me couldn’t wait to see Liz now she’d transformed and the other half was fast becoming a roiling storm of envy. I turned up and found everyone in the kitchen, Liz seated in the middle of them all looking at a map. She barely gave me a glance.

  “It will happen here,” she said, pointing. “On the west side of the lake near the parking lot.”

  I was mesmerised. Liz looked stunning. All of her pale blonde uncertainty had been replaced with a powerful, angelic peace. The fretful lines on her face were gone, as were the shadows under her eyes and faintly sagging flesh around her chin. She looked like a moonlit, holy Madonna. I had to suppress an awed gasp. To my intense discomfort, both Cain and Léon watched me take in her alteration. I half-wished I could see only what other people saw because the difference in Liz frightened me, in the same way the difference in the others when they’d transformed had frightened me.

  “It’s fifty cents, Frankie,” she told me. “What they drop into the lake. It’s a silver coin.”

  “Like the one left on the bedside table, when he’s in hospital,” I said, realisation rushing over me.

  “What happens? When is it?” Nadine pressed Liz.

  “We’re going to have to be careful how we manage this one. It’s hair-trigger.” Liz didn’t sound like her normal timorous self anymore. “These kids, they’re brothers, half-brothers to be precise. Eleven and nine years old. The older one has started moving with a rule-breaking crowd. He’s kind of becoming a troublemaker. A little shoplifting and petty vandalism. His little brother doesn’t know much about it. They wander down to the lake in the afternoon. They’ve found fifty cents and, with the other money they had, it’s given them just enough to split a small slushie. They don’t have much money so this is a treat for them. But while they’re standing on the bridge the coin drops and rolls through a crack in the timber. The eleven year-old is angry. He blames the younger kid who gets defensive and angry, too. They try to spot it in the water but eventually give up. They’re still upset about it though, especially the older kid. They found that coin on the ground at the gas station in the morning so they’ve been looking forward to their slushie all day long. They’re disappointed and pissed off. The older one watches the kiosk for a while. He sees how the woman behind the counter hands over the slushies and ice creams before she takes the money from customers. He gets the idea to grab the slushie without paying.

  “They wander over. There are a few people around but it’s getting later. The kiosk closes at five so the woman’s packing away. The younger kid is scared. He hopes his brother won’t go through with it. But the older boy goes up to the counter and asks for a slushie. She makes it up and hands it over, asking for the money, but the kid grabs it and runs, his brother running after him, terrified. The kiosk woman shouts after them and that attracts the attention of a jogger who’s stretching nearby. He’s big, not very fit, but he notices the commotion and sees them coming. He misses the older boy but throws himself at the younger one in the hoodie. The little boy goes flying and hits the back of his head on a post. He’s knocked out and taken to hospital but he never recovers. He’s left badly brain damaged and unable to do anything for himself.”

  It was like I could see it happening and I dipped my face, leaning over beside Cain where he sat at the kitchen table so the others wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. I pretended to study the map of Market Lake, listening wordlessly as they planned how they could stop it happening. Cain touched my leg to show me he knew and understood but spared my dignity by not bringing attention to my tears. However, when I risked a glance up, Léon was gazing at me with open concern and that same strange sadness I’d seen when he’d touched my face at the bar after the exhibition. I hastily returned my eyes to the map.

  We spent the afternoon planning our intervention into the event from Liz’s vision. We didn’t actually go to Market Lake until around four. Helen, Léon, and I wanted to go earlier but the others looked at us like we simply didn’t get it. It wasn’t going to happen until nearly five so they thought turning up any time earlier than that would be ridiculous. The plan was to prevent the man from jumping the boy. If we could protect them as they ran away then we could keep the little boy safe. We’d gone over various scenarios, trying to work out the best way to stop the boy get
ting hit. Léon was all for intervening earlier. He thought we should stop the kids from even attempting the theft. But Cain was adamant these events could only be stopped at the critical point―right when the victim was about to get hurt.

  “We’ve tried it before,” Cain said when Léon argued. “Everything is pushing the people involved toward the incident. We have to step in at the right moment.”

  At Market Lake we hovered around the kiosk area, not saying much. Helen and I were both edgy. The transformed among us were quiet and watchful, brimming with silent potency. It was hard to tear my eyes away from them.

  The kids arrived. My stomach tightened when I recognised them, the older boy with his coffee-coloured skin and serious dark eyes, and the younger boy in his maroon hoodie, darker skinned with dancing brown eyes and a smiling mouth. Tears threatened again at the thought of him unresponsive and brain damaged in hospital. Dammit, why was I such a weak link? I shook it off as best I could, determined to stay focused.

  They sauntered over the bridge, pausing to peer into the water. The bigger boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and silver flashed as his coin was flicked out and dropped onto the bridge. He went down on his knees instantly to retrieve it but it rolled down into a crack. They both gave cries of dismay and for the next twenty minutes tried to recover their coin.

  We waited a further half an hour as they talked, argued, kicked sticks along the bridge, and threw stones at the water. Léon looked like he was itching to go closer. Finally they headed toward us. Pretending to converse casually, Cain, Nadine, and Liz lingered on the path where the jogger would come through. He approached slowly from a distance, sweat streaking the front of his shirt. Owen and Léon hovered near to the kiosk, staying enough of a distance away that the kids could still carry out their crime. Jude, Helen, and I remained at the picnic table, trying to keep our eyes on everything at once. The kiosk woman began to pack up her displays as the kids approached, their shoulders hunched nervously.

  When they reached the kiosk the bigger boy asked for a blue slushie. His brother stood behind him looking scared. I’d practically seen the natural sunniness of his face through the others’ descriptions but it sure wasn’t in his expression now. The jogger drew closer. The woman poured the slushie. The older boy checked over his shoulder.

  From the corner of my eye there was movement: Léon. He abandoned his spot with Owen near the kiosk and sprinted toward the boys. Helen gasped beside me, seeking out Cain for guidance and I jumped reflexively into action, dashing for the kiosk to intercept Léon. Too slow. He made it to the kids and stopped in front of them, his face ablaze with glowing glory. I slowed, bewildered.

  “I know what you’re going to do,” he told the two boys.

  They stared up at him in shock. The kiosk woman tended to their slushie, glancing back at Léon without curiosity as she operated the noisy machine. “You must not do this. My colleagues and I―” he swept his arm to indicate the rest of us “―we are undercover police. We have been watching you for weeks. You are under surveillance. If you steal something one more time we will arrest you.” As he spoke he put his hand in his pocket and when the woman handed over the slushie to the stunned older boy, Léon paid her with the cash he’d pulled out. “Remember what I said,” he finished impressively.

  The older boy took off at speed but the smaller boy nodded, wide-eyed, and trotted after his brother. Cain had been running over to help but now he slowed his pace. Nadine and Liz exchanged a glance behind him and when I looked back at Helen, she was gaping in amazement. The kids headed for home fast while the big man who was jogging stopped to do some stretches on a nearby low rail.

  After watching the event subside as avidly as the rest of us, Léon turned to look at us with a triumphant smile. With his face still alight from the rescue he was hypnotically, painfully beautiful. Had that really happened? Had he found a way to prevent the crisis without waiting for the critical moment? I couldn’t help myself. I ran to him and threw my arms around him in an ecstatic hug. He laughed, lifting me off my feet as Helen and Jude joined us, hugging and clapping him on the shoulder. Then Owen came over to grab Léon by the shoulders and shake him with combined relief and reproach before telling him he’d done well. Running past Cain, Nadine whooped and jumped onto Léon’s back to clasp him in a bear-hug around the neck. Cain arrived last, adding his congratulations with a slap on Léon’s shoulder. For a moment I thought something dark appeared in his face but the expression disappeared as quickly as it had come, so quickly I thought I must have mistaken it.

  ****

  Something shifted in our group that day. The rock solid faith they’d all had in Cain, the belief he had all the answers, eroded a little. There was a barely-definable lean toward Léon. Liz and Jude obviously respected Léon but their loyalty to Cain was unshakable. Helen remained similarly stalwart, her worshipful gaze still fixed firmly on Cain. But it was as though Léon, with his bold experiment, and Owen, with his enquiring mind, clicked. Their friendship cemented before our eyes. Nadine also moved into the Léon camp. There was something victorious and slightly spiteful in her manner, as though she’d been sitting on the fence but now had reliable information to help her decide which way to jump. She poured admiration and congratulations on Léon, hardly sparing a glance for Cain all evening. Maybe this was mostly in my imagination but Helen seemed aware of a shift as well.

  “How did you know you’d be able to intervene before it went too far?” she asked Léon, giving Cain an anxious glance.

  “I don’t know. I just knew.” There was nothing that resembled gloating in his manner. Léon was all excitement and delight. “I felt that the children were still so young and impressionable that they might respond to reasoning. The little boy was frightened. He did not want to do what his brother urged him to do. I wondered perhaps if the lesson they needed would be more effective if delivered my way than through almost being brain damaged by a random stranger.”

  It made sense. Maybe we’d become so caught up in what had worked or not worked in the past that we’d failed to think about each individual rescue. Sometimes a different approach might better suit the circumstances.

  “That was smart.” Helen voiced my thoughts. “Kids nearly fall and nearly get hurt every day. It would take more than a near miss to make a long-term difference to a little boy. But saying what Léon said to them will probably really sink in, at least for the younger kid. I could see it made an impression.”

  “I thought the older boy was going to pee his pants when you said my colleagues,” Nadine said with a grin.

  “This changes how we can do things.” Owen looked at Cain who was doing a good job of keeping his face impassive. I hadn’t seen him use that face for a long time―not since I arrived and caused trouble. “We can plan more. Adapt. We should take more strategic opportunities, Cain, like Léon did. Try new things.”

  “I did that once. You might remember.” Cain’s voice was hard.

  Surprise and then understanding registered on Owen’s face.

  “Yes,” Liz said. “That’s right.”

  “The suicide kid.” Jude’s face dimmed with sadness.

  Nadine had no qualms about asking. “What happened?”

  Cain had clammed up so Liz explained. Her beauty enthralled me, candlelight beaming a soft glow off her pale golden hair; her voice warm and honey-sweet. “There was a boy, a sixteen year-old. Joshua. We first saw visions of him reading a letter. We saw him in an old shed, starting a car. Then visions of a piece of hose, cut short. When Cain had the full vision, we discovered this boy was from a local farming family. His grandfather ran the farm and his parents lived in town. His dad was a younger son and wasn’t going to get much of an inheritance. That’s just how it works for farmers―the older son tends to get the lot. But the grandfather said he would fund a good education for the boy. He offered to send him to board in Revel City so he could attend the best boys’ school in the state. But Joshua didn’t want to go. He wasn’t very good
at school and was terrified he would let everyone down. He just wanted to stay in Augur’s Well and maybe go to Tech to learn a trade at the end of high school. The pressure mounted until he felt trapped, hopeless. He contemplated suicide.”

  “But Cain had the full vision, right?” Nadine looked impatient. “That should have been an easy one to stop. The time factor wasn’t as critical as what happened today, or Nerks and the train. As long as you could get to him within a few minutes of his setting up the hose and starting the car he would be okay.”

  Liz hesitated. To hurt Cain went against her gentle nature, probably even more so now she’d transformed. Jude picked up the story.

  “We made a plan. We thought if we discussed things with him, talked it through, helped him open up and explain the situation to his parents, we might be able to prevent it happening. Stop it before it even got to the car-in-the-shed stage. Cain caught up with the kid at the skate park, got to chatting. He said …” Jude looked at Cain.

  “I started by saying I used to skate at that park,” he said. Although he attempted to suppress it, pain shook his voice. “I said I used to come back from boarding school on term breaks and skate there, and that I’d hated my school.”

  “It wasn’t quite true but Joshua could relate to that and opened up,” Liz said. “He told Cain his troubles. He said he didn’t know how to tell his parents the expensive school he’d got accepted into wasn’t what he wanted. Cain listened and gave him a few ideas, you know, pretending they were things he’d done. Strategies he’d used. Joshua seemed buoyed up. Excited. Like he’d made a positive decision within himself.”

  “We understood he wasn’t out of the woods so we kept an eye on him,” said Jude. “We knew when the event was supposed to happen so we kept watch. He didn’t attempt it. He seemed better. More hopeful. We thought we’d averted it.” He paused. “We hadn’t. We’d just delayed it. The kid was found hanging in a barn on his grandfather’s farm a few weeks later.”