by Nik Korpon
I remember seeing his eyes flicker with anxiety and joy as he stood beside me, watching Donael wrap his tiny fingers around my thumb when I held him for the first time, his glance alternating between the newborn and Aífe. What passed between them? Was that the moment they agreed to never speak of it? No. Donael is my boy. I raised him and love him and I know. And that’s all I need to know. The vial fills, memory spilling out around the needle.
“You fucking abandoned me!”
His body crashes to the floor, cushioned by carpet that’s thicker than my old mattress. His eyes glaze, his temple begins to depress. My breath is ragged, raging. My hands are moving of their own volition, vibrating and twitching. My chest convulses.
I want to punch him, pummel him, slam my fists against his face until his bones break beneath my knuckles and his nose caves and my hand notches inside his skull.
I want to pull him close, hold him against me and comfort him as he crosses over, mop his damp head with his ridiculous handkerchief. Recount stories from the field, from the bar, from the fields out in Westhell when we were young. Build the same fort for Cobb and Donael as his father built for us, but with a door that didn’t fall off when you opened it.
But I can only stand over him, pistol in hand, and watch his shallow breaths, watch the depression at his temple become larger as his eyes drift away. Regardless of what he’s done, he doesn’t deserve to be one of them.
I close my eyes. The bullet lands in his forehead with the dull thump of a heart imploding.
My pistol falls on the floor without a noise. It might as well have never existed. My knees turn to smoke as my back slides down the wall. I can taste my breath. I can do nothing but stare at his bulbous form, the impression of his knee joints visible against the stretched and bloodied linen, the laces of one shoe nearly untied.
The world quiets and compresses into one single room as I sit sadly by his side, vial cupped in my hand.
* * *
The hiss of a pneumatic joint. I startle, touch the knife in my boot. A fissure forms in the far wall and I wonder if I am hallucinating.
“Walleus?” a small voice calls. Behind that is wild clicking, a clicking I recognize.
The wall opens completely and I now realize it is a panic room. A boy emerges, the room behind him decorated in old rebel scarves I remember wearing fifteen years ago. The boy steps forward into the room, casting cautious glances over the dead bodies around the room. The shape of his eyes presses pins into my heart. His defined jawline. The way he touches the side of his neck with his index and middle fingers. The immediate tactile charge I feel on seeing him that reaffirms Walleus was lying.
“Donael.”
His head whips in my direction. Eyes probe me, wary and curious. He takes a tentative step forward and extends his hand, as if he could feel my skin from across the room. Cobb creeps out from behind him, head swiveling.
I push myself up to my knees.
“Dad?” he says.
I hold out my arms and he appraises me for another few seconds. Then a smile spreads across his mouth like the first rays of a sunrise we haven’t seen in years and years.
My boy runs to me. My boy, my boy, my boy.
He fits in my embrace like I am molded around him. He smells of sweat and dust and sweetened cereal.
I can think of nothing to say but repeat his name.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, his voice slipping on the tears.
And I laugh, because it seems right. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not,” he says.
“I’m not either.”
“Is Mom still…” he says, trailing off.
“No, she’s…” and I squeeze him tighter in place of a full response, so tight I’m almost afraid I’ll hurt him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Cobb clicks wildly behind us. I ignore him but Donael pulls himself from my arms and turns to him. Cobb stands over Walleus’s bent and broken body, his feet stomping the carpet beside his head, leaving small prints of blood behind.
“Oh shit,” Donael says.
“Watch your mouth,” I say out of paternal reflex, and the words make me tear up again. He hurries to Cobb, scooping him up and trying to get him away from Walleus’s body without touching any of the others, but Cobb screeches and beats on Donael.
“Help me!” His tone says I should have thought of it first.
I get to my feet and wrap my arms around both of them, Cobb’s scaled skin making me queasy when it brushes against my face, and I realize I have never been this close to him.
I usher them out the front door. Cobb’s screeching becomes wilder. His thrashing shifts from violent to desperate. We hurry down the sidewalk, away from here, back to our home.
“What happened?” Donael says.
I suck in my lips, shake my head. I don’t know what to say.
“Who were those guys?” he says.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “They don’t matter.”
“I told him,” Donael says, stroking Cobb’s back to soothe him.
“Told who?”
“Walleus.” He shakes his head. “I told him everybody leaves. He didn’t listen.”
I hold his shoulder, stopping him on the sidewalk. “Donael, I’m here.”
“I know.” He smiles, then nods at Cobb. “We need to get him home. How far away do you live?”
“I’m not going anywhere, son.” I wrap my arm around his shoulders and squeeze. “I’m done with fighting. I’m here for good.”
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
* * *
I must be dead for the sky is almost blue, though that might be residual trauma. Walking along the narrow streets, winding away from the riots and boys with pipes and butterfly knives, I consciously bring myself back to the moment, to the fact that I’m walking beside my son. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other. We should be chattering like birds on a telephone wire, yet we’ve barely said ten words. What is there to say? Where to start?
As we pass the few plate glass windows not covered by boards, I sneak a glance at his reflection. He’s an older, more developed version of the little boy from the football match. His cheeks are thinner, eyebrow ridge more defined, like his mother’s. His gait is confident but his countenance is slippery: one minute he’s smiling at the woman watering a patch of dirt that was once a garden, the next he bares his teeth at the children who stare and point at Cobb, now asleep. When I ask if he wants me to carry him so he can take a break, he acts like he’s relinquishing the honor, though I can tell he’s exhausted. His mouth shifts into some crooked version of a smile.
The blocks creep past us. A subtle nostalgia wafts around me, cataloging random details of the city: the pho house where Aífe told me she was pregnant, the store where a two year-old Donael would activate every toy and unleash them in a torrent of plastic monsters, the brigu bar where Walleus and I first discussed the possibility of focusing all the anger and discontent that had been building into a full-fledged rebellion, the hall where I gave my early sermons about equality and freedom. For every detail I remember, I try to erase three more in order to devote myself to my son.
Between the burnt carcasses of buildings, I can see twists of smoke in the direction of the Gallery that still smolders, and my chest tightens: Emeríann and I will now have two children in the apartment. To get to that apartment, we will have to walk for two hours to avoid the riots that Emeríann and I incited, riots to take down the ruling party of which we are the prime targets. We will leave for school while it’s still dark to avoid the crowds – I’ll have to find a new one for him, but how do I do that? – and he’ll have to adjust his diet to what we have available. My breath quickens as every new responsibility realized spawns three more, and as my head becomes a tangled mess of obligation and threatens to split open, he touches my hand.
“Do you need a break?” he says, pointing at Cobb, who sleeps on my chest. “I can carry him for a couple minutes s
o you can rest.”
“I can make it.”
He nods, and leaves his hand on mine.
We have an enormous change we’ll have to adjust to, but we’ll adjust to it. All of us. Together.
* * *
Eventually, we reach my building. I rest at the bottom of the steps, setting Cobb halfway on the old radiator before starting the journey up to the apartment.
We open the door and walk in to find Emeríann standing in the middle of the living room, covered in dust and blood and holding a large rifle in her hands, a pile of destroyed table behind her. She freezes like a child caught by her parents.
“Henraek,” she says. “Donael.” She rushes over and tries to wrap her arms around me and Cobb, Donael wide-eyed and watching the rifle. When she releases us, she kneels down in front of Donael.
“This is Emeríann,” I tell him.
“Hi,” he says, eyes still on the rifle as she gives him an awkward hug.
At the window, Silas pecks manically on the glass. “That’s Silas,” I say. “You’ll meet him later.”
“Like the cat?” he says. I smile and nod. “You named a pigeon after my dead cat?”
When he says it aloud, it sounds kind of creepy. I gesture around the apartment, indicating that this is now his home too and he should use whatever he likes.
“Where’s the bed?” he says, taking Cobb from me. “He should really sleep. He’ll process it better after he gets some rest.” His tone is so unemotional that I wonder if he is incredibly mature and self-possessed for his age or has been living too long with the idea that love is transient and there is no reason to become attached.
I show him the bedroom. Emeríann follows, the rifle in her hand now replaced by extra blankets.
“Do you need anything else?” I say to him as he tucks the sheets under Cobb’s legs with a tenderness that nearly breaks me.
“I’m OK.” He folds one blanket beneath Cobb’s stomach so it props him up, then covers his body with the other one, curving it around his shoulder and beneath his chin. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Emeríann and I watch him a moment, then close the door behind us.
“You couldn’t have washed all that off?” I say to her, pointing at the dust and blood on her.
“With what?” she says.
Dammit. I’d forgotten.
I hear Silas’s pecking again and let him in. He immediately flaps to the counter near the bedroom, as if he can feel the new presence in the apartment. Behind the door I hear Donael singing softly to Cobb. Down near the river where our brothers bled. I didn’t know he remembered that song. Emeríann flits around the room, collecting the table debris, organizing things, her maternal nesting instinct kicking in though she leaves fingerprints of dirt and blood on everything she touches.
I cup the vial from Walleus in my palm. It’s heavier than it should be. Donael creeps out of the bedroom and I shove it back in my pocket. He regards Silas with a sideways glance, then stands in the kitchen, surveying the apartment. His eyes fall on the sculpture over the couch. He cocks his head, examining it for a minute, then lets out something I tell myself is an impressed sigh.
“Do you need anything?” she says to him.
“No. I don’t know. I’m OK.”
“Help yourself to anything,” Emeríann says. She picks up the rifle and slings it over her shoulder. “Everything here is yours.”
“Where are you going?” I say to her.
“He’s back.” A huge smile blooms over her face.
“Who?”
She points at a stack of photos on the couch. The top one features an old man, his wrinkled – though defined – body atop a military vehicle that leads a formation of a hundred more. His face is covered by a boar mask, tusks gleaming. Sitting beside him is a woman, younger it appears, though her face is also covered with a mask. Holy shit. Belousz was right.
“Daghda’s alive,” she says. “He’s come back. And he brought Ragjarøn with him.”
I instinctively reach for the pistol in my waistband. Muscle memory.
“Who’s Daghda?” Donael says.
“I’m sorry, love,” she says. “I need to go.”
I nod, say sure, sure.
Emeríann’s eyes flick from me to Donael, back to me. Her words are slow, hesitant. “Are you coming?”
I look at my son, the boy I’ve mourned for six years, who is no longer a boy but quickly becoming a man, a man who will learn from his father what he should be. A man who will study my movements, catalog my actions and words, evaluate my beliefs, what I choose to pursue and what I stand against. It will be my responsibility to show him the world and our place in it.
“Go ahead,” I say to her. “We’ll meet you.”
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible if not for a number of people. Unfortunately, I have a terrible memory and will likely forget to list many of them. I apologize in advance.
Thank you to Marc, Penny, Phil, Mike, and Nick at Angry Robot for having faith in this book.
Thank you to Axel Taiari, Chris Irvin, Richard Thomas, and mi hermano de otra madre Gabino Iglesias for their attentive eyes.
Thank you to all the wonderful and supportive people I’ve met through the crime and sci-fi writing communities. I’d list everyone but that would take up a whole other book and I’d definitely forget someone. So thank you to you. And to you. And you, too. And of course you, how would I ever forget you.
Thank you to the world’s best agent, Stacia Decker, for taking a chance on this book, for being a great sounding board, and for saying no, you don’t sound crazy at all when I’m pretty sure I do.
And thank you most of all to my family: Amanda, Donovan, and Ruby. You keep me tethered and prevent me from spinning off into some crazy orbit. I couldn’t do any of this without you, and I love you all dearly.
About the Author
Nik Korpon is the author of several books, including The Soul Standard and Stay God, Sweet Angel. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children.
* * *
nikkorpon.com • twitter.com/nikkorpon
ANGRY ROBOT
An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
* * *
20 Fletcher Gate,
Nottingham,
NG1 2FZ
UK
* * *
angryrobotbooks.com
twitter.com/angryrobotbooks
The boys from County Hell
* * *
An Angry Robot paperback original 2017
* * *
Copyright © Nik Korpon 2017
* * *
Nik Korpon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
* * *
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
* * *
UKISBN 978 0 85766 655 0
US ISBN 978 0 85766 656 7
EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 657 4
* * *
Set by Epub Services.
* * *
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
* * *
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
* * *
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
* * *
Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkin
s Media Ltd.
ISBN: 978-0-85766-657-4